Marx, National Liberation and 'Anti-Imperialism'

[Zanthorus]

I've just been going through some of Marx's stuff on national liberation. I haven't got through much yet, but what struck me was what seemed to be something of a change of attitude between the early and late Marx.

At a meeting of the Fraternal Democrats in London 1847 to commemorate the 17th anniversary of the 1830 Polish uprising, Marx says that national opression and exploitation is something intrinsic to capitalism, which can only be overthrown through the abolition of existing property relations and the complete destruction of the old world. He tells the Chartists not to express 'pious wishes' for national liberation, but instead to focus on overthrowing the bourgeoisie.

In the Communist Manifesto, he famously replies to the accusation that the Communists wish to abolish nationalities and countries with the retort that the working-men have no country, and you cannot take from them what they have not got. He also remarks that it is only when exploitation and class antagonisms have ceased that exploitation of nations and national antagonism will cease.

On the other hand, in 1848 he writes an article on Poland supporting polish liberation, insofar as it doesn't take up narrow nationalistic aims, but institutes agrarian reform, a democratic system of government and the abolition of feudal privilege.

Later on he also supports the creation of a strong Poland as a kind of bastion to wade off the Tsarist state, which he thinks will be the first to attempt to crush any potential European revolution. He continue to support the liberation of Poland on the basis that once Poland has overthrown external military and Feudal despotism it will be able to participate in the socialist revolution.

My main question is wether or not Marx is sort of contradicting himself here? In the Manifesto and the 1847 speech he seems clear on the fact that national opression is something intrinsic to capitalism which can only be overcome by overthrowing it. On the other hand, he seems to support the removal of national opression as a stepping stone towards socialism.

Now that I think about it, is there a difference between supporting a struggle for liberation from military/Feudal despotism, and supporting a struggle for liberation from Imperialist capitalism?

[communard71]

Maybe Marx was just becoming more of a realist insofar as the insanely complicated European situation developing in the latter half of the 19th century. I dunno if that’s right, but communists definitely started to think of things more strategically. As to the struggle, I think capitalism is both military/feudal despotism and Imperialism so any fight against it is warranted. Capitalism is a cunning animal though, I mean; it can flourish when countries are jingoistic and rabidly nationalistic or when borders between nations are more permeable. It will adapt to whatever circumstance.

[Zanthorus]

To begin with, I don't see how saying that national opression is intrinsic to capitalism, and that it's abolition can only occur through the abolition of capitalist property relations, is not a 'realist' analysis. The same thing has been said by practically ever Marxist who dealt with this question.

And secondly, I was not aware that a particular mode of production could also be the mode of production that preceeded it.

[communard71]

Yes, according to Marxist analysis, there are “stages” of history, but realistically, there is a lot of bleedthrough. Feudal Barons were acting in a very imperialistic fashion during the Crusades and Capitalist relationships in Europe retained a great many feudal characteristics late into the 19th and even early twenty century. I think what you wrote is a realist analysis, no disagreement there. The abolition of property relations is a necessary prerequisite to communism. I was just throwing out an idea as to your question about Marx’s seeming shift in view over Poland.

[Zanthorus]

Yes, according to Marxist analysis, there are “stages” of history

Hmm, this does seem to be common sense. But I've never actually seen anything like this anywhere in Marx. His analysis is always a lot more complex than this, examining each form of society in it's internal development, drawing out it's internal tensions which lead it to push forward and develop.

I agree that there is a lot of bleedthrough in terms of feudalism and capitalism. However, most of the nations of europe in the 1840's were clearly 'feudal' to a much higher degree than, say, England. Specifically, when Marx talks about Poland, he says that a narrow Polish national revolution would be useless, as it would just replace the Russian autocrats with Polish aristocrats, the social position of the serfs would remain the same. I'm just thinking that there might be a difference between supporting liberation from a feudal autocracy like pre-1917 Russia, and liberation from the imperialism of a capitalist nation. It seems that if we pushed Marx's principle about national liberation struggles against feudalism forward, we could say that the removal of the imperialist bourgeoisie from above the national bourgeoisie would in no way change the social position of the wage-labourer.

I was just sort of wondering wether or not Marx's formula contained a contradiction, in that he said that freedom from national opression was impossible under capitalism, and yet he supported national liberation movements that were not only not dedicated to socialism, but were in fact trying to establish the conditions for capitalism. Thinking about it more clearly, it doesn't appear that problematic, taking into consideration that Marx was talking about liberation from feudal despotism in order to allow the development of capitalism, although it may be worth thinking over for the anti-impie crowd.

[communard71]

Yea, I’m reading you. Well, it makes sense that Marx wants capitalism to develop in all countries because of course; the “seeds of destruction” can only (or predominately) be sown there. It’s a really interesting, if not super esoteric thought on your part! :)
Still, maybe it’s as simple as Marx just not really expecting the sweeping development necessary to go from point A to point Z, especially in Poland (or anywhere in the East). Just a sort of, least dangerous condition or the enemy of my enemy sort of thing. Again, it’s a really interesting consideration.

[ZeroNowhere]

From what I recall, he took the view that Irish national liberation was necessary in order for there to be any chance of English socialism; in other words, successful anti-imperialist struggles allow socialism to actually come into the equation in the first place. In addition, the Irish natlib movement allowed the unity of the British and Irish workers towards a common cause ("The national antagonism between English and Irish working men, in England, has hitherto been one of the main impediments in the way of every attempted movement for the emancipation of the working class, and therefore one of the mainstays of class dominion in England as well as in Ireland.")

Engels, for example, named the Irish organized as a compact national party as, alongside the workers, forming one of the "motive forces of English political development". Also, Ireland would be unable to develop if held in its current state, "Every time Ireland was about to develop industrially, she was crushed and reconverted into a purely agricultural land." Engels, thus, says that, "A purely socialist movement cannot be expected in Ireland for a considerable time. People there want first of all to become peasants owning a plot of land, and after they have achieved that mortgages will appear on the scene and they will be ruined once more. But this should not prevent us from seeking to help them to get rid of their landlords, that is, to pass from semi-feudal conditions to capitalist conditions." Indeed, according to Marx, "Not only that the great landlords of England are also the largest landholders of Ireland, but having once broken down in what is ironically called the “sister” island, the English landed system will no longer be tenable at home."

Also, regarding Ireland in particular, Marx wrote, "What is distinctive of Fenianism? Actually, it originates from the Irish Americans. They are the initiators, and leaders. But in Ireland the movement took root (and is still really rooted) only in the mass of the people, the lower orders. That is what characterises it. In all earlier Irish movements the people followed the aristocracy or middle-class men, and always the Catholic churchmen."

A record of a speech by Engels goes:
If members of a conquering nation called upon the nation they had conquered and continued to hold down to forget their specific nationality and position, to “sink national differences” and so forth, that was not Internationalism, it was nothing else but preaching to them submission to the yoke, and attempting to justify and to perpetuate the dominion of the conqueror under the cloak of Internationalism. It was sanctioning the belief, only too common among the English working men, that they were superior beings compared to the Irish, and as much an aristocracy as the mean whites of the Slave States considered themselves to be with regard to the Negroes.

In a case like that of the Irish, true Internationalism must necessarily be based upon a distinctly national organisation; the Irish, as well as other oppressed nationalities, could enter the Association only as equals with the members of the conquering nation, and under protest against the conquest. The Irish sections, therefore, not only were justified, but even under the necessity to state in the preamble to their rules that their first and most pressing duty, as Irishmen, was to establish their own national independence. The antagonism between Irish and English working men in England had always been one of the most powerful means by which class rule was upheld in England. He recollected the time when he saw Feargus O'Connor and the English Chartists turned out of the Hall of Science in Manchester by the Irish. Now, for the first time, there was a chance of making English and Irish working men act together in harmony for their common emancipation, a result attained by no previous movement in their country. And no sooner had this been effected, than they were called upon to dictate to the Irish, and to tell them they must not carry on the movement in their own way, but submit to be ruled by an English Council! Why, that was introducing into the International the subjugation of the Irish by the English.

Also:


One of the real tasks of the 1848 Revolution (and the real, not illusory tasks of a revolution are always solved as a result of that revolution) was the restoration of the oppressed and dispersed nationalities of Central Europe, insofar as these were at all viable and, especially, ripe for independence. This task was solved for Italy, Hungary and Germany, according to the then prevailing conditions, by the executors of the revolution’s will, Bonaparte, Cavour and Bismarck. Ireland and Poland remained. Ireland can be disregarded here, she affects the conditions of the Continent only very indirectly. But Poland lies in the middle of the Continent and the conservation of her division is precisely the link that has constantly held the Holy Alliance together, and therefore, Poland is of great interest to us....

I therefore hold the view that two nations in Europe have not only the right but even the duty to be nationalistic before they become internationalistic: the Irish and the Poles. They are most internationalistic when they are genuinely nationalistic. The Poles understood this during all crises and have proved it on all the battlefields of the revolution. Deprive them of the prospect of restoring Poland or convince them that the new Poland will soon drop into their lap by herself, and it is all over with their interest in the European revolution.

However, he also writes, on a different natlib issue:


I should say that, in the Egyptian affair you take the so-called National Party rather too much under your Wing. We don’t know much about Arabi, but I’d wager 10 to 1 that he is a run-of-the-mill Pasha who begrudges the financial chaps their tax revenue because he would, in good oriental fashion, sooner pocket it himself. Here we have the same old story as in all agrarian countries. From Ireland to Russia, from Asia Minor to Egypt, the peasant of an agrarian country is there to be exploited. It has been the same since the time of the Assyrian and Persian empires. The satrap, alias pasha, is the eastern prototype of the exploiter, as are the business men and jurists in the west today. REPUDIATION of the Khedive’s debts may be all right, but the question is, what then? And we West European socialists ought not to allow ourselves to be so easily duped as the Egyptian fellaheen or as – all Latins. Strange. All Latin revolutionaries lament the fact that their revolutions invariably redound to someone else’s advantage – quite simply because they have always been taken in by the word ‘revolution’. And yet it’s hardly possible for a scrap to break out anywhere without revolutionary Latins raving about it with one voice – and quite uncritically. As I see it, we can perfectly well enter the arena on behalf of the oppressed fellaheen without sharing their current illusions (for a peasant population has to be fleeced for centuries before it learns from experience), and against the brutality of the English without, for all that, espousing the cause of those who are currently their military opponents.

Essentially, Marx seemed to generally express the view that unity between the Irish and British working classes would be impossible if the British working class were to oppose the Irish natlib movement, and was improved by the British movements in sympathy with Ireland. It is important here that the Fenians were, according to Marx, a lower-class movement. Engels, on the other hand, took a similar view, and also took the view that the Polish natlib movement was essential if Poland were to remain on the side of revolution, as this movement gave them their interest in the European revolution.

However, I just found the summary of Marx's position which I was looking for, which pretty much includes all of the above reasoning:


After studying the Irish question for many years I have come to the conclusion that the decisive blow against the English ruling classes (and it will be decisive for the workers’ movement all over the world) cannot be delivered in England but only in Ireland.

On January 1, 1870,[b] the General Council issued a confidential circulare drawn up by me in French (for only the French journals, not the German ones produce important repercussions in England) on the relation of the Irish national struggle to the emancipation of the working class, and therefore on the attitude which the International Association should take towards the Irish question.

I shall give you here only quite briefly the salient points.

Ireland is the bulwark of the English landed aristocracy. The exploitation of that country is not only one of the main sources of their material wealth; it is their greatest moral strength. They, in fact, represent the domination over Ireland. Ireland is therefore the cardinal means by which the English aristocracy maintain their domination in England itself.

If, on the other hand, the English army and police were to be withdrawn from Ireland tomorrow, you would at once have an agrarian revolution in Ireland. But the downfall of the English aristocracy in Ireland implies and has as a necessary consequence its downfall in England. And this would provide the preliminary condition for the proletarian revolution in England. The destruction of the English landed aristocracy in Ireland is an infinitely easier operation than in England herself, because in Ireland the land question has been up to now the exclusive form of the social question because it is a question of existence, of life and death, for the immense majority of the Irish people, and because it is at the same time inseparable from the national question. Quite apart from the fact that the Irish character is more passionate and revolutionary than that of the English.

As for the English bourgeoisie, it has in the first place a common interest with the English aristocracy in turning Ireland into mere pasture land which provides the English market with meat and wool at the cheapest possible prices. It is likewise interested in reducing the Irish population by eviction and forcible emigration, to such a small number that English capital (capital invested in land leased for farming) can function there with “security”. It has the same interest in clearing the estates of Ireland as it had in the clearing of the agricultural districts of England and Scotland. The £6,000-10,000 absentee-landlord and other Irish revenues which at present flow annually to London have also to be taken into account.

But the English bourgeoisie has also much more important interests in the present economy of Ireland. Owing to the constantly increasing concentration of leaseholds, Ireland constantly sends her own surplus to the English labour market, and thus forces down wages and lowers the material and moral position of the English working class.

And most important of all! Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the “poor whites” to the Negroes in the former slave states of the U.S.A.. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland.

This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And the latter is quite aware of this.

But the evil does not stop here. It continues across the ocean. The antagonism between Englishmen and Irishmen is the hidden basis of the conflict between the United States and England. It makes any honest and serious co-operation between the working classes of the two countries impossible. It enables the governments of both countries, whenever they think fit, to break the edge off the social conflict by their mutual bullying, and, in case of need, by war between the two countries.

England, the metropolis of capital, the power which has up to now ruled the world market, is at present the most important country for the workers’ revolution, and moreover the only country in which the material conditions for this revolution have reached a certain degree of maturity. It is consequently the most important object of the International Working Men’s Association to hasten the social revolution in England. The sole means of hastening it is to make Ireland independent. Hence it is the task of the International everywhere to put the conflict between England and Ireland in the foreground, and everywhere to side openly with Ireland. It is the special task of the Central Council in London to make the English workers realise that for them the national emancipation of Ireland is not a question of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment but the first condition of their own social emancipation.
So yes, it wasn't out of respect for the right of nations to self-determination so much as Marx's view that it was necessary for proletarian revolution in England. In other words, his viewpoint is, in fact, consistent: if national oppression may only be finally vanquished under socialism, while natlib movements are necessary in order to bring this about, then it would seem even more imperative for these movements to be successful. While national oppression is something intrinsic to capitalism, he evidently viewed it as possible to smash the English dominion over Ireland, which would still leave a large amount of national oppression remaining.

[scarletghoul]

i dont really see a contradiction. you have tos liberate communities(/'nations') from the capitalist empire. that is, overthrwoing capitalist in certain territory and achieving 'antional liberation' at the same time.