I’m torn between “Every people deserves the right to self-determination” and “Catalunya is richer than Spain, so it’s the bourgeosie wanting to split off from the poors and pay less tax”
I’m torn between “Every people deserves the right to self-determination” and “Catalunya is richer than Spain, so it’s the bourgeosie wanting to split off from the poors and pay less tax”
I’m sceptical about independence movements in general. Overwhelming majority of newly independent countries go absurdly nationalistic and anticommunist. The only ones that turned out to be at least acceptable were explicitly leftist from the beginning.
Read Stalin’s Marxism and the National Question. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03a.htm
Nationalism derives from the bourgeoisie and intellectual middle class that develops as a result of capitalism, but national oppression can make it a cause of the working class. Not all “nationalism” is the same and must be evaluated dialectically on a case by case basis
But it goes both ways when the bourgeoisie use nationalism to keep its control over the working class even after successful secession. In fact, the same nationalism can swiftly go from somewhat positive to very negative thing, like Polish nationalism that almost instantaneously went from national liberation goals to anticommunism and national oppression against ethnic minorities in newly independent Poland.
I believe Mao also argued similarly, that some construction of nationalism among oppressed peoples is beneficial in encouraging anti-colonial, anti-imperialist movements and that it’s different from nationalism found in imperialist countries.
Yes! Mao argued that it wasn’t just nationalism, but their nationalism was internationalism because a defeat for the Japanese imperialists was a victory for all working people including the Japanese working class.
Yes, that’s what it was! I couldn’t remember exactly. Thanks!
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_10.htm
Really good writing
I think the issue is, that’s not always true. Sometimes an imperial victory would be a material benefit for the imperial working class.
While this is the thesis of third worldism/settlers it’s completely untrue unless you think class struggle is completely non-existent in imperialist countries. The strength and position of the monopoly capitalists gives them the power to wage war totally against the lower classes of their own country. Third worldism almost in a sense sees the equation backwards where the reality is that revolution is stifled in the imperialist countries because those countries monopoly capitalists have such intense power they have both the carrot and the stick to prevent the class struggle from being able to escalate. The Russian Revolution was the first successful socialist revolution out of all countries because it was the weakest, most backwards, and internally factionalist imperialist power.
In this case, Mao was specifically talking about how the Japanese communists were also waging war against the Japanese imperialists class fighting for the working class. There were opportunist and trotskyite figures in the united front against Japanese imperialism that were claiming that they must abandon nationalism in favor of internationalism and sit behind the KMT, while Mao and similar forces were correctly advocating for taking up the national cause and fighting on the Frontline everywhere there was one.
Really? Then why does the US working class filled with a bunch of regressive shitasses?
That’s imprecise enough to be meaningless. US working class is filled with regressive shitasses, but also deeply kind and intelligent folks; same as anywhere on the planet.
Besides, you didn’t challenge faer point at all; you agreed with fae that an imperialist nation’s working class is done a disservice by living in a country with enough treats that it dissuades them from engaging in class struggle.
This is a really excellent point!
independence movements in colonized countries, even the ones that went left afterward involved to some extent rightist nationalists. the only event conforming to your general rule is the dissolution of the USSR, which distinctly marginalized the left since the left are the ones who were overthrown. other countries it’s not so discrete, look at Africa or South America, leftwing and conservative independence movements have both been successful, and have often overthrown each other after independence.
Independence movements in post-WW1 Europe also mostly produced right-wing nationalistic countries with short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic as the only exception (that got crushed by other newly formed countries).
Former colonies is murkier question, but even there things often didn’t improve for the left (although interference from imperial powers often played a decisive role in shifting the political dominance to rightists there).
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