Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 23:29:32 +0100
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-I: Marxism  vs. Maoism & nationalist "socialism"


In message <199709191521_MC2-211A-BA04-AT-compuserve.com>, james m blaut
<70671.2032-AT-CompuServe.COM> writes
>Neil: you speak of "Marx and Engels  fleeting tactical  support 
>of the Irish national movement in the 19th  century" but this is a
>distortion of Marxist history. Marx and Engels consistently supported, and
>worked for, Irish liberation throughout their lives. See the Progress
>Publishers collection, *Marx and Engels on Ireland*. Lenin, in the early
>years, had some doubts about the Irish struggle, but he vigorously
>supported it from the time of the 1916 uprising. 

I agree with Jim. The point here surely is that Marxists do not have a
blanket approach, but look at each struggle on its own merits, to try
and understand what, if any, is its positive dynamic. The point Lenin
made - paraprhasing Connolly - was that anyone who waits for the two
classes to line up opposite each other in a clear cut battle to the
death will wait for ever. Many national struggles, especially in less
developed countries took on a positive dynamic because they were
undertaken against imperial oppression.

However, a rough assessment of recent national struggles - between
Serbs, Croats and Bosnian muslims, in Chechenia, Rwanda and ex-Zaire -
does seem to suggest that the era of progressive national liberation is
at an end. With the principle national liberation movements of the
seventies effectively in disarray in Ireland, Central America and
Palestine, most of the newer national conflicts today seem to be of an
involuted and negative character. The pre-eminince of the West does seem
to have led to a situation where national sentiments are readily
manipulated, as in Croatia and Bosnia (against the Yugoslavia), in
Kurdistan (against Iraq), and amongst the Ogundi (against Nigeria).
-- 
James Heartfield


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