Thanks to my friend Calum for prompting this essay - as a rule, seriously, email me your questions and I’ll do my best to tackle them. The question on and of Nationalism and the Left is serious one, one that has been debated since Marx first started writing and possibly beforehand. In here I will discuss the case for and against the idea and use of Nationalism in left-wing ideology and praxis and more importantly, if this idea still poses a use for us in the present and future.
To start, several definitions.
From the Merrian Webster Dictionary:
:loyalty and devotion to a nation
:a nationalist movement or government
From the Oxford Dictionary of English:
Identification with one's own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations.
Now, Calum’s question, or request to write about Nationalism and the Left is a loaded one. Any even half-arsed student of leftist theory can run off a number of quotes and citations about the pitfalls and dangers of Nationalism. Especially, and on a personal level, being half English and half German, the denunciation of Nationalism is almost inherent. The concentration camp in which my Grandmother was a slave labourer and the one my Grandfather helped liberate in 1945 is 40 miles away from my apartment today. With that intensity of a personal history, and having learned that Nationalism was one of the contributing factors that led to the 3rd Reich- not to mention the entire libraries of other historical examples, it almost becomes impossible to argue for the case of Nationalism and the Left.
It is helpful to put Nationalism into 3 distinctive historical periods. 1840s-1920s (theory), 1920s-1990s (praxis), 1990s to present day (post Cold War to Neo-Liberal, Hyper Capitalistic post-praxis). Granted, there are plenty of notable nuances in those individual periods but for this piece, that will have to do.
Let’s start with the basic premise of Anti-Nationalism in the Left. In The Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx and Engels famously consider:
‘The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality. The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got.’
There is an immanent truth in this prescription: if nations are identified as bourgeois constructs, then their ideology – nationalism – can only be a tool for advancing the interests of the bourgeoisie. This is at its core, the basis for anti-nationalism and more importantly, the idea behind class consciousness and the global call for proletarian solidarity. It has shaped much of the theory and praxis of Socialist /Communist/ Anarchist history since then. There are plenty of other early pieces that are extremely noteworthy on the subject, especially Lenin and Luxemburg, who, whilst agreeing in theory, disagreed, or would have done had Luxemburg not been murdered, on how Lenin shaped the early Soviet National-International dichotomy of the Soviet Union. Famously, Luxemberg, in the 1908 piece The National Question, frontally attacked the
‘bourgeois principle of self-determination’ since it ‘gives no practical guidelines for the day to day politics of the proletariat, nor any practical solution of nationality problems’
All that means, for our present day context, is the argument that the idea of the state and the subsequent concept of nationalism and all it entails is nothing but an idea that promotes, installs and maintains a vertical power structure with the illusion of upward social mobility. In reality, as we so clearly seeing today, this is a lie and doesn’t offer any real notion of freedom from capital.
This gives you a little theoretical background and a starting point to the Left’s aversion to Nationalism. Clearly, the second period put all this theory into stark contrast of Realpolitk not just in Europe, the Soviet Union, the Middle East but also in Asia, Central and South America as well as Africa. Frankly, the entire world’s Left was, during this period, not only tested in their theoretical beliefs, but were also shown that Nationalism could be co-opted, formed and ultimately used as a tool for successful left-wing transformations of their respective countries.
I am going to leave to you to do proper research into the various examples that exist where a Leftist interpretation of Nationalism proved to be helpful in creating a base for large parts of the working classes to unify behind. Notably though are: Sweden, post WW2 Britain, FDR era U.S., the Basque Country, Palestine, Cuba, Vietnam but also Northern Ireland, Scotland, Panama, Corsica and Nicaragua.
It is important to note that large parts of the practical period were theoretically dominated by the Soviet Union and particularly Stalin and Tito.
Joseph Stalin promoted a civic patriotic concept called revolutionary patriotism in the Soviet Union. As a youth, Stalin had been active in the Georgian nationalist movement and was influenced by Ilia Chavchavadze, who promoted cultural nationalism, material development of the Georgian people, statist economy and education systems. When Stalin joined the Georgian Marxists, Marxism in Georgia was heavily influenced by Noe Zhordania, who evoked Georgian patriotic themes and opposition to Russian imperial control of Georgia. Zhordania claimed that communal bonds existed between peoples that created the plural sense of countries and went further to say that the Georgian sense of identity pre-existed capitalism and the capitalist conception of nationhood. After Stalin became a Bolshevik in the 20th century, he became fervently opposed to national culture, denouncing the concept of contemporary nationality as bourgeois in origin and accused nationality of causing retention of "harmful habits and institutions". However, Stalin believed that cultural communities did exist where people lived common lives and were united by holistic bonds, claiming that there were real nations while others that did not fit these traits were paper nations. Stalin defined the nation as being "neither racial nor tribal, but a historically formed community of people". In 1913, Stalin rejected the concept of national identity entirely and advocated in favour of a universal cosmopolitan modernity. This shaped much of the thought but more so the praxis emitting from the Soviet Union that in turn shaped a lot of the work done in Communist-Nationalism.
Yugoslavia under the rule of Tito promoted both Marxism–Leninism and Yugoslav nationalism. Tito's Yugoslavia was overtly nationalistic in its attempts to promote unity between the Yugoslav nations and asserting Yugoslavia's independence. To unify the Yugoslav nations, the government promoted the concept of brotherhood and unity in which the Yugoslav nations would overcome their cultural and linguistic differences through promoting fraternal relations between the nations. This nationalism was opposed to cultural assimilation as had been carried out by the previous Yugoslav monarchy, but it was instead based upon multiculturalism. While promoting a Yugoslav nationalism, the Yugoslav government was staunchly opposed to any factional ethnic nationalism or domination by the existing nationalities as Tito denounced ethnic nationalism in general as being based on hatred and war. The entire history of Tito’s Yugoslavia is hugely fascinating, not only because of the above but mainly due to it’s willingness to step away from the Stalinist ideology and to a certain point Leninist Doctrine. This is a good book for anyone wanting to start getting into that.
Obviously, entire libraries can be written about the multitude of examples where Socialist Theory worked hand in hand with Nationalism and they have. Fact is, and primarily due to the rise of European Fascist Nationalism in the 20s-40s, we have long associated Nationalism with the far right. Rightly so, Nationalism has and can easily be manipulated into forms of racism, exclusion and violence. I am certainly not arguing for a co-opting of that idea into a new left, but there are nuances that need to be accepted and talked about, as thin as they may be. The possibility of using the common ground of a nation state, excluding the original counterpoint from Marx above, is tempting because it is a simple, almost a populist solution to unity that in my opinion disregards the more complex issues behind this solution. However, even Marx and Engels could see these uses and whilst they saw the origins of the nation state and national identity as bourgeois in nature, both believed that the creation of the centralized state as a result of the collapse of feudalism and creation of capitalism had created positive social conditions to stimulate class struggle. Marx followed Hegel's view that the creation of individual-centred civil society by states as a positive development, in that it dismantled previous religious-based society and freed individual conscience. In The German Ideology, Marx claims that although civil society is a capitalist creation and represents bourgeois class rule, it is beneficial to the proletariat because it is unstable, in that neither state nor the bourgeoisie can control a civil society.
In detail:
Civil society embraces the whole material intercourse of individuals within a definite stage of development of productive forces. It embraces the whole commercial and industrial life of a given stage, and, insofar, transcends the state and the nation, though on the other hand, it must assert itself in its foreign relations as nationality and inwardly must organize itself as a state.
Marx and Engels evaluated progressive nationalism as involving the destruction of feudalism and believed that it was a beneficial step, but they evaluated nationalism detrimental to the evolution of international class struggle as reactionary and necessary to be destroyed.
This is key nuance to keep in mind. Much of leftist theory and thus praxis is led by this progression, and many of the historical examples above are based on this idea as well; that Progressive Nationalism is part of the Communist evolution to a class-less, state-less, humanistic world.
Obviously, all this exists and existed with massive opposition, our dear old friend Capitalism and its tools have always fought tooth and nail against this development, co-opting Nationalism for all the well known anti-humanistic purposes, maintaining states and their vertical power structures and their monopoly on violence. That leads us to the last stage, our modern age. This is where it gets really interesting mainly because the Mothership that is Capitalism has essentially made Nation States irrelevant.
Again, I don’t need to explain Globalism and the Universalism of Capitalism but even at a superficial examination, it is easy to discern that Nations truly no longer play a role, other than providing the infrastructure necessary to ship goods and offer us consumers the bare minimum in health care, the dream of upward social mobility and the fraudulent notion of freedom. Multinational corporations, hugely anti-democratic, anti-social and predatory in their nature, do, however, shape the course of the present tense and future. These global entities with no allegiance to a people or a country have more power than most countries in any case. If Bezos ever decides to militarize his assets he would immediately become the 3rd Superpower on the global scale. I find this fascinating in the sense that the enemy itself essentially answered the question itself if Nationalism can play a role for the new Left going forward.
No, it does not, in clear terms.
Present Day Capitalism has made nationalism obsolete as a useful tool for progressive solidarity and theory, further cementing a Marxist idea that the system will eat itself. Of course, the Capital will continue to utilize Nationalism to stir strife amongst us all, to further divide and conquer. When we truly speak about re-imagining our own modernity, accepting the fact that Nation States as we knew them are a concept of the past, we can finally move towards a global case of working class solidarity. Furthermore, I suggest adapting Capitalism’s Universality at all local levels to further drive this change towards a better tomorrow. Strict adherence to theoretical dogma for irrelevant internet purity points is reactionary and pointless. Yes, let’s have an idea but embrace Universalism as a key factor for a global Humanistic future.
Great reading, thanks man!!