Nationalism and the 'national question'

Socialists and Scottish independence

The people of Scotland have the right to decide whether they want to be part of a common political system with the people of England and Wales, or to separate. For the majority of the readers of this paper, in England, that is the chief issue raised by the current moves for a referendum on Scottish independence. The people of Scotland should have their say. The more clear-cut and simple the referendum question, the more democratic the decision will be. For readers in Scotland, a second question arises: how should they vote in the referendum? Lenin wrote much about socialist attitudes to...

Socialists and the national question

By Martin Thomas. First published in Socialist Organizer, no. 567 & 568, 24 June and 8 July 1993 Capitalism, as Marx pointed out, gives the notion of human equality, for the first time, "the fixity of a popular prejudice." Only consistent democracy - the translation of that "prejudice" into conscious politics - can underpin workers' unity. The "National Question" for socialists is, I believe, a subsidiary of this question of consistent democracy. Democracy is more than individual rights because people are more than individuals. They identify themselves as part of a community and, in the modern...

The Crimean Tatars: the nation Stalin deported

Beginning on the night of 17-18 May 1944, the entire Crimean Tatar population was deported and scattered across Central Asia. Some 100,000 Crimean Tatars, 40% of the population, died in the course of the deportation and the first year after that. In the 1950s some minor concessions were made to the demands of the remaining Crimean Tatars. But in 1988 the Crimean Tatars were still campaigning for, and being refused, the right to return to the Crimean peninsula. The Crimean Tatars were annexed into the Russian Empire of Catherine II in 1783. Before then they had had an ambiguous relationship...

Trotsky on the national question

Two articles by Trotsky on the national question. One, a critique of the Third Duma (1907-12), concluding: "The bourgeoisie of the dominant national does not want equality of national rights. The bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation is not able to fight for equality of rights. The national question... falls with its entire weight to the proletariat... "For workers the Russian Empire is alien fetters placed upon them by history... We stand here, on this ground sown by crimes... we wish to cleanse it of blood and filth and make it fit for the peaceful cohabitation of peoples..." Two, an imagined...

Forum: Crooke vs McCalman on Scotland; Ellis vs Weaver on movies; Fine, Rigby, and Bradley on S Africa; Conway vs Bradley on PR

Stan Crooke disputes Ian McCalman's support for calls for a Scottish Assembly. Edward Ellis disputes Belinda Weaver's argument that movie-making has deteriorated. Bob Fine, Tom Rigby, and Clive Bradley dispute arguments dismissing the COSATU union federation in South Africa in favour of the NACTU federation. Liam Conway argues that Trotsky's "permanent revolution" idea is more "applicable" today than Clive Bradley allowed for in his article in Workers' Liberty 7 . Click here to download pdf .

Anti-Semitism and the Left: an Open Letter to Tony Cliff [1988]

Click here to download pdf . Dear Cliff: The present nightmarish reawakening of the furies of Judeophobia in Eastern Europe demands of honest socialists whose commitment to the destruction of Israel puts them in an attitude of comprehensive hostility to all but a handful of the Jews alive in the world today that they look at their own political features in the mirror of these events. After Hitler, anti-semitism disguised itself, and drew new nourishment from the conflict between Arab and Jew in the Middle East which had been intensified by the Holocaust. It was a doctrine that dared no longer...

Vladimir Lenin on “Cultural-National” Autonomy [separate schools for each nationality, etc.]

The essence of the plan, or programme, of what is called “cultural-national” autonomy (or: “the establishment of institutions that will guarantee freedom of national development”) is separate schools for each nationality. The more often all avowed and tacit nationalists (including the Bundists) attempt to obscure this fact the more we must insist on it.
Every nation, irrespective of place of domicile of its individual members (irrespective of territory, hence the term “extra-territorial” autonomy) is a united officially recognised association conducting national-cultural affairs. The most...

40 Years of the IRA: Where the Hillside Men Have Sown [IWG 1967]

James Connolly wrote: “Ireland occupies a position among the nations of the earth unique … in the possession of what is known as a ‘physical force party’ – a party, that is to say, whose members are united upon no one point, and agree upon no single principle, except upon the use of physical force as the sole means of settling the dispute between the people of this country and the governing power of Great Britain. Click here to download this article as pdf . "The latter-day high falutin ‘hillside’ man, on the other hand, exalts into a principle that which the revolutionsists of other countries...

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