Vladimir Lenin
The Right of Nations of Self-Determination
Clause 9 of the Russian Marxists' Programme, which deals with the right of
nations to self-determination, has (as we have already pointed out in
Prosveshcheniye) given rise lately to a crusade on the part of the opportunists.
The Russian liquidator Semkovsky, in the St. Petersburg liquidationist
newspaper, and the Bundist Liebman and the Ukrainian nationalist-socialist
Yurkevich in their respective periodicals have violently attacked this clause
and treated it with supreme contempt. There is no doubt that this campaign of a
motley array of opportunists against our Marxist Programme is closely connected
with present-day nationalist vacillations in general. Hence we consider a
detailed examination of this question timely. We would mention, in passing, that
none of the opportunists named above has offered a single argument of his own;
they all merely repeat what Rosa Luxemburg said in her lengthy Polish article of
1908-09, "The National Question and Autonomy". In our exposition we shall deal
mainly with the "original" arguments of this last-named author.
1.What Is Meant By The Self-Determination Of Nations?
Naturally, this is the first question that arises when any attempt is made at a
Marxist examination of what is known as self-determination. What should be
understood by that term? Should the answer be sought in legal definitions
deduced from all sorts of "general concepts" of law? Or is it rather to be
sought in a historico-economic study of the national movements?
It is not surprising that the Semkovskys, Liebmans and Yurkeviches did not even
think of raising this question, and shrugged it off by scoffing at the
"obscurity" of the Marxist Programme, apparently unaware, in their simplicity,
that the self-determination of nations is dealt with not only in the Russian
[Social-Democratic] Programme of 1903, but in the resolution of the London
International Congress of 1896 (with which I shall deal in detail in the proper
place). Far more surprising is the fact that Rosa Luxemburg, who declaims a
great deal about the supposedly abstract and metaphysical nature of the clause
in question, should herself succumb to the sin of abstraction and metaphysics.
It is Rosa Luxemburg herself who is continually lapsing into generalities about
self-determination (to the extent even of philosophising amusingly on the
question of how the will of the nation is to be ascertained), without any where
clearly and precisely asking herself whether the gist of the matter lies in
legal definitions or in the experience of the national movements throughout the
world.
A precise formulation of this question, which no Marxist can avoid, would at
once destroy nine-tenths of Rosa Luxemburg's arguments. This is not the first
time that national movements have arisen in Russia, nor are they peculiar to
that country alone. Throughout the world, the period of the final victory of
capitalism over feudalism has been linked up with national movements. For the
complete victory of commodity production, the bourgeoisie must capture the home
market, and there must be politically united territories whose population speak
a single language, with all obstacles to the development of that language and to
its consolidation in literature eliminated. Therein is the economic foundation
of national movements. Language is the most important means of human
intercourse. Unity and unimpeded development of language are the most important
conditions for genuinely free and extensive commerce on a scale commensurate
with modern capitalism, for a free and broad grouping of the population in all
its various classes and, lastly, for the establishment of a close connection
between the market and each and every proprietor, big or little, and between
seller and buyer.
Therefore, the tendency of every national movement is towards the formation of
national states, under which these requirements of modern capitalism are best
satisfied. The most profound economic factors drive towards this goal, and,
therefore, for the whole of Western Europe, nay, for the entire civilised world,
the national state is typical and normal for the capitalist period.
Consequently, if we want to grasp the meaning of self-determination of nations,
not by juggling with legal definitions, or "inventing" abstract definitions, but
by examining the historico-economic conditions of the national movements, we
must inevitably reach the conclusion that the self-determination of nations
means the political separation of these nations from alien national bodies, and
the formation of an independent national state.
Later on we shall see still other reasons why it would be wrong to interpret the
right to self-determination as meaning anything but the right to existence as a
separate state. At present, we must deal with Rosa Luxemburg's efforts to
"dismiss" the inescapable conclusion that profound economic factors underlie the
urge-towards a national state.
Rosa Luxemburg is quite familiar with Kautsky's pamphlet Nationality and
Internationality. (Supplement to Die Neue Zeit No. 1, 1907-08; Russian
translation in the journal Nauchnaya Mysl, Riga, 1908.) She is aware that, after
carefully analysing the question of the national state in §4 of that pamphlet,
Kautsky arrived at the conclusion that Otto Bauer "underestimates the strength
of the urge towards a national state" (p. 23 of the pamphlet). Rosa Luxemburg
herself quotes the following words of Kautsky's: "The national state is the form
most suited to present-day conditions, [i.e., capitalist, civilised,
economically progressive conditions, as distinguished from medieval,
pre-capitalist, etc.]; it is the form in which the state can best fulfil its
tasks" (i.e., the tasks of securing the freest, widest and speediest development
of capitalism). To this we must add Kautsky's still more precise concluding
remark that states of mixed national composition (known as multi-national
states, as distinct from national states) are "always those whose internal
constitution has for some reason or other remained abnormal or underdeveloped"
(backward). Needless to say, Kautsky speaks of abnormality exclusively in the
sense of lack of conformity with what is best adapted to the requirements of a
developing capitalism.
The question now is: How did Rosa Luxemburg treat these historico-economic
conclusions of Kautsky's? Are they right or wrong? Is Kautsky right in his
historico-economic theory, or is Bauer, whose theory is basically psychological?
What is the connection between Bauer's undoubted "national opportunism", his
defence of cultural-national autonomy, his nationalistic infatuation ("an
occasional emphasis on the national aspect", as Kautsky put it), his "enormous
exaggeration of the national aspect and complete neglect of the international
aspect" (Kautsky) - and his underestimation of the strength of the urge to
create a national state?
Rosa Luxemburg has not even raised this question. She has not noticed the
connection. She has not considered the sum total of Bauer's theoretical views.
She has not even drawn a line between the historico-economic and the
psychological theories of the national question. She confines herself to the
following remarks in criticism of Kautsky:
"This 'best' national state is only an abstraction, which can easily be
developed and defended theoretically, but which does not correspond to reality."
(Przeglad Socjaldemokratyczny, 1908, No. 6, p. 499.)
And in corroboration of this emphatic statement there follow arguments to the
effect that the "right to self-determination" of small nations is made illusory
by the development of the great capitalist powers and by imperialism. "Can one
seriously speak," Rosa Luxemburg exclaims, "about the 'self-determination' of
the formally independent Montenegrins, Bulgarians, Rumanians, Serbs, Greeks,
partly even the Swiss, whose independence is itself a result of the political
struggle and the diplomatic game of the 'concert of Europe'?!" (P. 500.) The
state that best suits these conditions is "not a national state, as Kautsky
believes, but a predatory one". Some dozens of figures are quoted relating to
the size of British, French and other colonial possessions.
After reading such arguments, one cannot help marvelling at the author's ability
to misunderstand the how and the why of things. To teach Kautsky, with a serious
mien, that small states are economically dependent on big ones, that a struggle
is raging among the bourgeois states for the predatory suppression of other
nations, and that imperialism and colonies exist - all this is a ridiculous and
puerile attempt to be clever, for none of this has the slightest bearing on the
subject. Not only small states, but even Russia, for example, is entirely
dependent, economically, on the power of the imperialist finance capital of the
"rich" bourgeois countries. Not only the miniature Balkan states, but even
nineteenth-century America was, economically, a colony of Europe, as Marx
pointed out in Capital. Kautsky, like any Marxist, is, of course, well aware of
this, but that has nothing whatever to do with the question of national
movements and the national state.
For the question of the political self-determination of nations and their
independence as states in bourgeois society, Rosa Luxemburg has substituted the
question of their economic independence. This is just as intelligent as if
someone, in discussing the programmatic demand for ...
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