Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 09:47:04 -0500
From: james m blaut <70671.2032-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-I: Reply to Lew -on nation building


Reply to Lew:

National struggle is, basically, struggle for state power under conditions
where the ultimate power is held by a foreign ruling force and behind it a
foreign bourgeoisie. That is the crux of most national struggles and nearly
all national liberation struggles. Now Lew yammers about the difference
between class struggle which is "real" and national struggle which is an
"abstraction" (going for some vague, future, "higher purpose"). How can
anybody believe that struggle for state power -- political struggle -- is
not "real?" What Lew seems to mean is that the political struggles of the
working class in rich capitalist societies are *important* while such
struggles in countries which are nationally oppressed -- colonies and
neocolonies -- are frivolous. This sounds like the kind of contempt for
non-European working peoples that is the curse of modern Marxism.

Rosa Luxemburg was a great revolutionary but she was absolutely wrong on
the national question. More than any other Marxist of her time, she was
resolutely opposed to *all* national struggles. She scoffed at the idea
that colonial peoples could win state independence (with one hesitant
speculation that India might be the only exception). Her opposition to
Polish bourgeois nationalism blinded her to the fact that some other
national movements might be progressive -- a criticism that Lenin made over
and over. I think her basic problem was that she held the illusion that the
workers of all countries were ready to rise and overthrow capitalism, and
national struggles would be at best diversionary. Had she lived into the
1920s, and seen the way European working-class movements were backtracking,
I think she would have changed her mind, and in particular would have --
following Lenin -- rethought the matter of colonial liberation struggles.

En lucha

Jim Blaut  

P.S. Neil: It isn't true that "Latin American 'national liberation'"
happened in the last cedntury. Puerto Rico is not yet liberated. Does that
bother you?  


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