Originally posted by Marxist Internet Archive Encyclopedia
While at first sight it would appear that a nation is a large body of people sharing common genealogy, language, culture, etc., sharing a common territory with a government recognised by other nations and common legal code, it would be more true to say that this is exactly what a nation is not.
A large body of people sharing a common language and culture can be a tribe, with everyone relating to others in extended family relationships which exclude others living within or outside the territory. In order to become a nation as such, it is necessary to transcend the narrow bounds of tribal law and encompass multiple languages, cultures and genealogy, to be multicultural. A nation based on race, like Israel for example, is not yet fully a nation. When Palestinians and Israelis live in the territory of Israel/Palestine with the same rights, then the Israelis will be less of a tribe and more of a nation.
A people may have their common laws, culture and language and yet have not found their homeland, like the Kurds for example, or may live in their homeland under the domination of another, settler nation, like the Australian Aborigines. Surely these are nations nonetheless? But they are not yet fully nations, because a nation does need to have its territory in order to be able to develop. So the Kurds and the Australian Aborigines are nascent or embryonic nations, nations who have not yet actualised.
But a nation that loses connection with its citizens when they leave the borders of the national territory are not yet fully nations either, but simply a territorial administration. A nation must also be a community, that offers protection to its members wherever they are.
Even the national state is a symptom of the incompleteness of the development of the nation, for the state is an indicator of the existence of unresolvable conflicts, usually class conflicts within the community, and the nation is only fully mature when such antagonisms have disappeared and the state withers away. But this is conceivable only when the obsolescence of classes occurs on a world scale. Consequently, the fully mature nation ceases to be a nation at all, dissolving itself in the world community of peoples.
Thus a nation is a process, not an entity.
Nations come into being either:
* by the coming together of disparate tribes or peoples, as was the case in the British Isles which still constitutes itself as a multi-national state, or the United States, which Thomas Paine described as an “alliance of independent republics” in 1782, or in Germany or Italy which arose by the coming together of a large number of principalities;
* or by the conquest of a number of peoples by one dominant people, as was the case with Russia;
* This type of process has only been open to a few nations that achieved statehood early enough to avoid colonisation. The majority of nations have come about by the forceful imposition of a colonial government by a foreign power, national consciousness and organisation then being achieved in the struggle for national liberation;
* In a very few cases prior to 1989, nations came into being by peaceful secession.
Communists support the right of nations to self-determination and oppose all forms of colonialism, neo-colonialism, imperialism or “benevolent interference”. Every people needs to achieve modernity by their own route at their own pace.
The current process of globalisation raises a number of problems for national self-determination. Globalisation has posited an ethical universalism wherein it is held that ethical values, such as “human rights” transcend national and cultural distinctions, and this has led to the legitimation of the carpet bombing of other nations by imperialist states. The road to a world-wide free association of peoples can only pass through the national self-determination of all peoples – whether they have achieved statehood and national autonomy or not.
The fundamental values of the working class are internationalism and solidarity and the ethical problems posed by the suffering of people of other nations is determined by these values.
Globalisation is indeed already undermining national government but nations will wither away only gradually over a long period of time through maturation, not abolition. “Globalisation from below” must respect national differences while transcending national borders.
