Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 09:51:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: RACE


James Heartfield is completely correct. The big question for Marx and
Engels was the national question, not race. The reason that people like
the anticommunist, Afrocentrist Carlos Moore turn M&E's writings into
statements of Eurocentrism is that they have a political agenda. Moore 
is a reactionary.

And what Marx and Engels said in their private writings is of biographical
interest, but matters little in understanding them as political figures.
Only liberal moralists like Stanley Fish would try to make an issue out
of their personal writings. 

Most of what Marx and Engels were concerned about on the national question
has to do with the task of the bourgeois revolution. Feudal social and
economic relations were an obstacle to capitalist development, which in
turn created the preconditions for proletarian revolution. Hence the
urgency was to unite a nation having in common the following criteria:

--It must hold a population large enough to allow for an internal division
of labor which characterises a capitalist system with its competing
classes; and

--occupy a cohesive and sufficiently large territorial space to provide
for the existence of a viable state.

The French revolution was a model for this form of national development.
Just as the Russian revolution was a model for 20th century revolutions,
so was the revolution of 1789 a model for bourgeois democrats in places
like Italy, Germany and Ireland that had remnants of the old order.

The Jacobins believed that the only way to consolidate a modern, bourgeois
state was to follow a path of tight centralization and *linguistic
standardization*. We should not neglect the importance of the second task.
Before the revolution, France had a patchwork of linguistic communities
that spoke either Romance languages (Langue d'Oc, Langue d'Oil, Catalan),
other Celtic languages (Breton), and other ancient pre-Latin languages
(Euzkera). In the period before the revolution, only 3 million inhabitants
of Paris and the surrounding areas spoke "French" as their mother tongue
and a smaller number could read and write in this language.

The reason it became an urgent political task for the Jacobins to enforce
French as a national language was that feudal counter-revolution tended to
be strongest in areas where the language was not spoken, such as Brittainy
where Breton was the native tongue.

In the context of the bourgeois revolution, the *crushing* of culture and
language of the non-Parisian French national communities was progressive.
Marx and Engels agreed completely that such action was necessary not only
for 18th century France, but contemporary Europe as well. State
centralization and national unification, with the consequent
*assimilation* of small national communities was the only viable path to
social progress.

However, what role do stateless or numerically small national communities
such as the Bretons play? Are they all grist for the mill of bourgeois
revolution? The answer from Marx and Engels is not encouraging. If the
number one priority is to create strong national states, how else can they
view cultural and ethnic obstructionists. If doctrinaire Marxism of the
twentieth century puts forward the slogan that nationalism divides the
working-class, there is some antecedent for this since Marx and Engels put
forward slogans 150 years ago that the nationalism of the lesser
nationalities divides the bourgeoisie.

They pinned their hopes above all on the national unification of the
German peoples, who they contrasted as a "more energetic race" to the
smaller national communities on the eastern outskirts of the German
national territory, who could only be an obstacle to unification:

"Bohemia and Croatia (another disjected member of the Slavonic family,
acted upon by the Hungarian, as Bohemia by the German) were the homes of
what is now called on the European continent 'Panslavism'. Neither Bohemia
nor Croatia was strong enough to exist as a nation by herself. Their
respective nationalities, gradually undermined by the action of historical
causes that inevitably absorbs into a more energetic stock, could only
hope to be restored to anything like independence by an alliance with
other Slavonic nations." ("Panslavism--the Schleswig Holstein War").

Who would be the leader of such a federation of Slavonic nations? The only
such leader waiting in the wings is the Russian czar, according to Marx.
There is one consolation. The democratic movement in the Austro-Hungarian
monarchy will assimilate these "relics of people", transforming their
culture and national identity into the 'superior' German and Magyar
culture.

Here is the clearest theoretical statement on the attitude of Marx and
Engels on the national question:

"There is no country in Europe which does not have in some corner or
another one or several fragments of peoples, the remnant of a former
population that was suppressed and held in bondage by the nation of which
later became the main vehicle for historical development. These relics of
a nation, mercilessly trampled under the course of history, as Hegel says
'these residual fragments of peoples' always become standard bearers of
counter revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss
of their national character, just as their whole existence in general is
itself a protest against a great historical revolution.

Such in Scotland are the Gaels, the supporters of the Stuarts from 1640 to
1745.

Such in France are the Bretons, the supporters of the Bourbons from 1742
to 1800.

Such in Spain are the Basques, the supporters of Don Carlos.

Such in Austria are the panslavist Southern Slavs, who are nothing but
residual fragments of peoples, resulting from an extremely confused
thousand years development. This residual fragment, which is likewise
extremely confused sees its salvation only in the reversal of the whole
European movement, which in its view ought not to go from west to east,
but from east to west." ("The Magyar Struggle")

This is the context of Marx and Engels writings on the national question.
It has nothing to do with race hatred or national chauvisim. It is simply
an expression of the state of Marxist thought at a given stage of its
evolution. These ideas were superseded by Lenin's who understood that the
national question had much more relevance for the proletarian revolution
than Marx or Engels appreciated.

Louis Proyect




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