Russian Tensions
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pgb wrote:
- [Marx and Engels] understood the role of nationality in shaping class-based movements, and that distinctive cultures, languages and ‘ways of life’ are embodied in nations and permeate all aspects of peoples lives.
In the Communist Manifesto’s famous Chapter I “Bourgeois and Proletarians”, Marx and Engels deal exclusively with the class war, and see “the role of nationality, etc.” as an impediment to the class war.
The Communist Manifesto is about as anti-nationalist as you can get.
It defiantly sees “national interest” as a backwards capitulation to the interests, and so thought patterns, of the class enemy.
- The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood.
All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe.
In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations.
And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
Marx and Engels did take sides (inconsistently with the Manifesto) in some national struggles, where they backed the side they thought might break feudal strangleholds or (ambitiously) hasten socialism along.
But they never “understood the role of nationality, etc.” as grounds for justifying nations retaliating against each other. Capitalism is universal retaliation.
So when they wrote in the Manifesto
- Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.
they were asking (in 1848) a national proletariat to engage in class war with its national bourgeoisie, and not to go out of its way to join forces with it.
We have written several critics about Marx exaggerated support to some bourgeois nationalist struggles, but their ideas in that time was that capitalist development was needed in order to establish socialism.
Rosa Luxembourg also raised a critic against Marx due to his support to Poland nationalist struggle, and she said that his stand was obsolete.
The Communist Manifesto should not have been called a communist manifesto because it contains several reformists clauses and some state capitalist clauses too, it was to be called the German Manifesto.
When Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto they were not experienced socialists, but when they started to get older, they began to have a better understanding of the world, after Lewis Morgan discovery they changed certain personal definitions that they had.
Our articles on the 100 and 150 years of the Communist Manifesto we have mentioned all those changes, and the so called specter of Communism in Europe in that time did not exist either.
During their younger years they had Blanquists and Mensheviks stands
Those mistakes made by Marx and Engels are being used by the nationalist groups to justify their struggles, they are still living in the XIX century.
Nationalism is a mental poison within the working class movement
PS: It is very easy to talk about wars of national liberation, and patriotism using a keyboard, the problem is to see and experience the death of friends, relatives and peoples that you have loved, and see them dead in a box, and leaving children, mother and wife without a father, a son/daughter and a husband, and then later on the so called peoples will not remember than anymore, and the only thing that they do every year is to bring flowers to the cemetery, shout several patriotic slogans and sing patriotic songs. Alive they would have done a much better job
By coincidence scanning in articles from the January 1939 Socialist Standard this passage from the editorial would seem to have some relevance to the history of Ukranian nationalism:
“The Czechs, who in the last War declared that they were being loyal to Socialism by fighting to dismember Austria and gain Czech independence, have their counterpart to-day in the Ukrainian “Socialists,” who are prepared to back Hitler-Germany in order to secure Ukrainian independence from Poland. One of them told a News Chronicle correspondent (News Chronicle, December 9th, 1938): “Better an alliance with the devil than continued Polish oppression.” Very short-sighted, of course, and incompatible with Socialist principle, but so is all expediency.”
Most of it but not the western part which at the time (1939) was part of Poland — Lvov for instance was then in Poland. It became part of Russia when under the Ribbentrop Molotov pact of 1939 Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. This part had never been part of Russia and the people there no particular affinity with Russia. Before WW1 it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
I see that the TUC has just overwhelmingly backed a motion supporting the Ukrainian capitalist state in the war with the Russian capitalist state. The organisation misleadingly called “Anti-Capitalist Resistance” has published an article endorsing this position:
It says:
“This article explores the debates around the TUC’s resolution and argues for an independent working-class anti-war movement.”
and that it is
“entirely possible to support the people of Ukraine in their armed resistance, be critical of Zelensky’s neoliberal government and also oppose NATO”.
How much more Orwellian and dishonest can you possibly get? How on earth can you be anti-war and yet support engaging in a war? It is also delusional if it imagines that supporting the “people of Ukraine in their armed resistance” can somehow be separated from supporting NATO´s efforts in supplying the Ukrainian state with military hardware
Of course, it goes without saying that any genuine anti-capitalist resistance would strongly resist the capitalist propaganda that workers have a stake in some fictitious entity called the capitalist nation-state. This lie motivates Russian workers to support Russia´s military imperialism just as it motivates Ukrainian workers to rally to the defense of “their” capitalist state or workers in Donbas to argue, with no less (or more) justification to argue that they have every to resist what they see as brutal Ukrainian aggression ever since 2014.
All these different perspectives are based on the false premise that workers possess a country in some meaningful sense.
From the above song (that Paula likes so much): ‘I dreamed I saw a mighty room,
The room was full of [world leaders].
And the paper they were signing said,
They’d never fight again.’That could only happen in a dream. While its a lovely song, it shows how effective capitalist propaganda is, because it assumes wars are caused by mad world leaders, and also, it’s the ‘plebs’ who do the fighting, not world leaders. Finally, it was obviously written a long time ago, because the world leaders are all men.
Full of women like Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi? What a nightmare. As if that would make any difference.
Finally, it was obviously written a long time ago, because the world leaders are all men.
Except in these countries where the leaders are currently women.
Bangladesh, Barbados, Denmark, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, Gabon, Georgia, Greece, Honduras, Hong Kong, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, Moldova, Namibia, Nepal, New Zealand, Samoa, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Sweden, Taiwan, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, and Uganda.
It does not make any difference if the world is governed by men, women, homosexual, transgender, white, blacks, Indian, mixed, latinos, African, asian, all of them will do the same job which is to administer the capitalist state and to defend the interests of an economic system known as capitalism.
None of them will be able to change the logic of an economic system, it would be the opposite way, the economic system will change them, and history has proven that
The politic or the conception of gender, sex. ethnicity, and race will not resolve our problems, on the contrary, it has created more problems, and the problems of the world can not be resolved with songs and composers. We need class consciousness and political action
In the past we had protests songs and composers and they did not resolve the problem affecting the working class, the Cuban Trova singers and composers were considered one of the best protest music composers and revolutionaries and they were supporter of world dictators known as socialists leaders.
We do not need leaders of any kind, on the contrary, we must remove all of them, and place them in the museum of antiquities
We are wasting too much time on superficial ideas, Peoples are going thru a lot of suffering in Libya and Syria and we are not mentioning that situation, as a socialist party we must concentrate our efforts in the problems that are affecting the world working class
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