The Right of Nations to Self-Determination

Contents

1. Introduction 1 min 5

   Lenin explains why he is answering a wave of attacks on Clause 9 of the 1903 party programme, the right of nations to self-determination, by the Liquidator Semkovsky, the Bundist Liebman and the Ukrainian Yurkevich. All of them, he says, merely repeat Rosa Luxemburg’s long Polish article of 1908–09, “The National Question and Autonomy”, so it is her arguments he will mainly examine.

2. 1 What Is Meant by the Self-Determination of Nations? 13 min 15

   Self-determination must be understood historically, not through legal definitions. National movements arose with capitalism, which needs a unified market, a common language and a national state; the national state is the norm of the capitalist epoch, as Kautsky argued against Otto Bauer. Luxemburg’s objection that small states depend on great powers confuses economic with political independence. Asia and the Balkans show that independent national states favour capitalist development. Self-determination therefore means the right to secede and form a separate state.

3. 2 The Historically Concrete Presentation of the Question 9 min 7

   Marxism demands that a question be placed in its historical setting. The epoch of bourgeois-democratic revolutions, when national movements become mass movements, must be distinguished from the epoch of mature capitalism. Luxemburg preaches concrete analysis and quotes Marx, Engels and Lassalle on particular cases, but never asks what epoch Russia is in. Her argument for Polish autonomy, based on Russia’s “Asiatic despotism”, actually points towards Poland’s separation.

4. 3 The Concrete Features of the National Question in Russia and Russia’s Bourgeois-Democratic Transformation 12 min 9

   Western Europe completed its bourgeois-democratic revolutions between 1789 and 1871, so its socialist programmes need no clause on self-determination; Eastern Europe and Asia entered that epoch only in 1905. Austria is no model: there Hungarians and Czechs gravitated towards preserving the state against stronger neighbours. In Russia, by contrast, a single Great Russian centre oppresses non-Russian majorities on the borderlands, many of them with kin across the frontier. Even the Austrian Social-Democrats in fact tolerate demands for national independence.

5. 4 “Practicality” in the National Question 14 min 10

   The demand for “practicality” is a bourgeois demand. The proletariat supports national movements only conditionally, against oppression, never for privileges; it recognises the right to secede without promising any nation secession. Rejecting that right, as Luxemburg does in fear of Polish nationalism, actually helps Great Russian nationalism, the most dangerous of all. Great Russian workers must reject all privileges for their own nation and uphold, for example, Ukraine’s right to a state of its own.

6. 5 The Liberal Bourgeoisie and the Socialist Opportunists in the National Question 27 min 15

   Every class position confirms Lenin’s reading. The reactionaries deny all national rights; the liberal Kadets, in their newspaper Rech and at their 1914 conference, accept only “cultural” self-determination and reject secession, siding in principle with the nationalists. Their fear that the right to secede will break up the state is like the reactionaries’ fear that the right to divorce will destroy the family. Denying the right of secession means supporting the privileges of the dominant nation; workers must be neutral among the bourgeoisies of all nations.

7. 6 The Secession of Norway from Sweden 14 min 12

   Luxemburg cites Norway’s secession from Sweden in 1905 as proof that independence movements are petty-bourgeois. Lenin answers that the example shows exactly what the right of self-determination means: a dispute over secession settled by vote, not force. The Swedish workers, by defending Norway’s right to secede, strengthened their solidarity with the Norwegian workers. He praises Polish Social-Democracy’s fight against Polish nationalism but says Luxemburg turns a Cracow perspective into “Polish nationalism inside out”.

8. 7 The Decision of the London International Congress of 1896 10 min 12

   The 1896 London congress of the International recognised the full right of all nations to self-determination together with the international unity of workers. Lenin shows that it rejected both the PPS demand for Polish independence and Luxemburg’s denial of the right, following Kautsky. Marx’s support for Poland was right for the mid-nineteenth century; by 1900 capitalist Poland had lost that special role, but in Eastern Europe and Asia the right of secession remains necessary alongside workers’ unity.

9. 8 Karl Marx the Utopian and Rosa Luxemburg the Practical 17 min 14

   Answering Luxemburg’s jibe about Irish independence, Lenin traces Marx’s changing view of Ireland. Marx and Engels were critical of national movements, yet backed Poland and, from 1867, the separation of Ireland, because English reaction rested on Ireland’s subjugation and the English workers could not free themselves while it lasted. Marx’s Irish policy is the model for how socialists of an oppressing nation must treat the national movements of the oppressed.

10. 9 The 1903 Programme and Its Liquidators 21 min 18

    Lenin reconstructs the 1903 debate on Clause 9: all delegates, even Bundists and Economists, understood self-determination as the right to secede; the Polish delegates, who proposed cultural autonomy instead, left the congress, but joined the party in 1906 without ever moving to change the clause. He attacks Trotsky for claiming the Polish Marxists wanted it deleted, and ridicules the Liquidators Liebman, Yurkevich and Semkovsky for treating the programme as vague.

11. 10 Conclusion 9 min 11

    Lenin sums up. In Russia, ruled by Great Russian nationalism of reactionary and liberal kinds, refusing to defend the right to self-determination means giving in to that nationalism. The proletariat’s task is two-sided: fight all nationalism, above all the Great Russian kind, and recognise the right of nations to secede, while uniting the workers of all nations in common organisations. A postscript notes that even the Bundist Kosovsky understands self-determination as the right to secede.