4. “Practicality” in the National Question

The opportunists have taken up with particular zeal Rosa Luxemburg’s argument that Clause 9 of our programme contains nothing “practical”. Rosa Luxemburg is so delighted with this argument that in her article we sometimes find this “slogan” repeated eight times on a single page.

Clause 9, she writes, “gives no practical guidance for the day-to-day policy of the proletariat, no practical solution of national problems”.

Let us examine this argument, which is also formulated in such a way that Clause 9 either means nothing at all or commits us to support all national aspirations.

What does the demand for “practicality” in the national question mean?

It means either support for all national aspirations; or the answer “yes” or “no” to the question of secession by any nation; or, in general, that national demands are immediately “practicable”.

Let us examine all three possible meanings of the demand for “practicality”.

The bourgeoisie, which naturally assumes the hegemony (leadership) at the beginning of every national movement, calls support for all national aspirations practical. However, the proletariat’s policy in the national question (as in other questions) supports the bourgeoisie only in a certain direction; it never coincides with the bourgeoisie’s policy. The working class supports the bourgeoisie only in the interests of national peace (which the bourgeoisie cannot bring about completely and which can be achieved only with complete democratisation), in the interests of equal rights, in the interests of the best conditions for the class struggle. Therefore it is precisely against the practicality of the bourgeoisie that the proletarians advance their principled policy in the national question, always supporting the bourgeoisie only conditionally. In national affairs every bourgeoisie wants either privileges for its own nation or exclusive advantages for it; this is what is called being “practical”. The proletariat is opposed to all privileges, to all exclusiveness. To demand that it be “practical” means following the lead of the bourgeoisie, falling into opportunism.

The demand for a “yes” or “no” reply to the question of secession in the case of every nation may seem a very “practical” one. In reality it is absurd; it is metaphysical in theory, while in practice it leads to subordinating the proletariat to the bourgeoisie’s policy. The bourgeoisie always places its national demands in the forefront, and does so unconditionally. With the proletariat, however, these demands are subordinated to the interests of the class struggle. Theoretically, one cannot say in advance whether the bourgeois-democratic revolution will end in a given nation seceding from another nation or in its equality with the latter; in either case the important thing for the proletariat is to ensure the development of its class. For the bourgeoisie it is important to hamper this development by pushing its aims into the background behind the aims of “its own” nation. That is why the proletariat confines itself, so to speak, to the negative demand for recognition of the right to self-determination, without giving guarantees to any nation and without undertaking to give anything at the expense of another nation.

This may not be “practical”, but it is in effect the best guarantee of the most democratic of all possible solutions. The proletariat needs only such guarantees, whereas the bourgeoisie of every nation requires guarantees of its own interests, regardless of the position of (or of the possible disadvantages to) other nations.

The bourgeoisie is most interested in the “practicability” of a given demand; hence its invariable policy of coming to terms with the bourgeoisie of other nations to the detriment of the proletariat. For the proletariat, however, what matters is to strengthen its class against the bourgeoisie and to educate the masses in the spirit of consistent democracy and socialism.

This may not be “practical” as far as the opportunists are concerned, but it is the only real guarantee, the guarantee of the greatest national equality and peace, despite the feudal landlords and the nationalist bourgeoisie.

The whole task of the proletarians in the national question is “unpractical” from the standpoint of the nationalist bourgeoisie of every nation, because the proletarians, opposed as they are to nationalism of every kind, demand “abstract” equality, the absence in principle of the slightest privileges. Failing to understand this, Rosa Luxemburg, by her ill-considered praise of practicality, has opened the door wide precisely to the opportunists, and especially to opportunist concessions to Great Russian nationalism.

Why Great Russian? Because the Great Russians in Russia are an oppressor nation, and opportunism in the national question will naturally express itself differently among oppressed nations and among oppressor nations.

In the name of the “practicality” of its demands, the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations will call on the proletariat to support its aspirations unconditionally. The most practical thing is to say a plain “yes” in favour of the secession of a particular nation, rather than in favour of the right of all nations, whatever they may be, to secede!

The proletariat is opposed to such practicality. While recognising equality and an equal right to a national state, it values above all and places foremost the alliance of the proletarians of all nations, and assesses any national demand, any national secession, from the angle of the workers’ class struggle. The slogan of practicality is in fact merely a slogan for the uncritical adoption of bourgeois aspirations.

We are told: by supporting the right to secession you are supporting the bourgeois nationalism of the oppressed nations. This is what Rosa Luxemburg says, and it is echoed by the opportunist Semkovsky, who, incidentally, is the only representative of Liquidationist ideas on this question in the Liquidationist newspaper!

Our reply is: no, it is precisely the bourgeoisie that cares here about a “practical” solution, while the workers care about distinguishing the two tendencies in principle. Insofar as the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation fights the oppressor, to that extent we are always, in every case, and more resolutely than anyone else, in favour, for we are the staunchest and most consistent enemies of oppression. But insofar as the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation stands for its own bourgeois nationalism, we are against it. A fight against the privileges and violence of the oppressor nation, and no toleration of the strivings for privilege on the part of the oppressed nation.

If, in our agitation, we do not put forward and advocate the slogan of the right to secession, we shall play into the hands not only of the bourgeoisie but also of the feudal landlords and the absolutism of the oppressor nation. Kautsky long ago advanced this argument against Rosa Luxemburg, and the argument is indisputable. In her anxiety not to “assist” the nationalist bourgeoisie of Poland, Rosa Luxemburg, by rejecting the right to secession in the programme of the Russian Marxists, is in fact assisting the Great Russian Black Hundreds. She is in fact assisting opportunist tolerance of the privileges (and worse than privileges) of the Great Russians.

Carried away by the struggle against nationalism in Poland, Rosa Luxemburg has forgotten the nationalism of the Great Russians, although it is precisely this nationalism that is the most formidable at the present time; it is precisely this nationalism that is less bourgeois and more feudal, and it is precisely this that is the principal obstacle to democracy and to the proletarian struggle. The bourgeois nationalism of every oppressed nation has a general democratic content that is directed against oppression, and it is this content that we unconditionally support, while strictly distinguishing it from the tendency towards national exclusiveness, and fighting against the tendency of the Polish bourgeois to oppress the Jew, and so on and so forth.

This is “unpractical” from the standpoint of the bourgeois and the philistine. But it is the only policy in the national question that is practical, based on principle, and really helps democracy, liberty and proletarian unity.

The recognition of the right to secession for all; the appraisal of each concrete question of secession from a point of view that removes all inequality, all privileges, all exclusiveness.

Let us consider the position of an oppressor nation. Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot. The interests of the freedom of the Great Russian population require a struggle against such oppression. The long, age-long history of the suppression of the movements of the oppressed nations, and the systematic propaganda in favour of such suppression coming from the “upper” classes, have created enormous obstacles to the cause of freedom of the Great Russian people itself, in the form of its prejudices and so on.

The Great Russian Black Hundreds deliberately foster these prejudices and stir them up. The Great Russian bourgeoisie tolerates them or panders to them. The Great Russian proletariat cannot achieve its own aims or clear the road to its freedom without systematically combating these prejudices.

In Russia the creation of an independent national state remains, for the time being, the privilege of the Great Russian nation alone. We, the Great Russian proletarians, who defend no privileges whatever, do not defend this privilege either. We are fighting on the ground of a definite state; we unite the workers of all nations living in this state; we cannot vouch for any particular path of national development; we are advancing to our class goal by all possible paths.

However, we cannot move towards that goal unless we combat all nationalism and uphold the equality of the various nations. Whether Ukraine, for example, is destined to form an independent state is a matter that will be determined by a thousand unpredictable factors. Without attempting idle “guesses”, we firmly uphold something that is beyond doubt: the right of Ukraine to form such a state. We respect this right; we do not uphold the privileges of the Great Russian over the Ukrainians; we educate the masses in the spirit of recognition of this right, in the spirit of rejecting state privileges for any nation.

In the leaps that all countries have passed through in the period of bourgeois revolutions, clashes and struggles over the right to a national state are possible and probable. We proletarians declare in advance that we are opposed to Great Russian privileges, and this is what guides our entire propaganda and agitation.

In her quest for “practicality” Rosa Luxemburg has overlooked the principal practical task both of the Great Russian proletariat and of the proletariat of other nationalities: that of day-by-day agitation and propaganda against all state and national privileges, and for the right, the equal right, of all nations to their national state. This is (at present) our principal task in the national question, for only in this way can we defend the interests of democracy and the alliance of all proletarians of all nations on an equal footing.

This propaganda may be “unpractical” from the point of view of the Great Russian oppressors, as well as from that of the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations (both demand a definite “yes” or “no”, and accuse the Social-Democrats of being “vague”). In reality it is this propaganda, and this propaganda alone, that ensures a genuinely democratic and genuinely socialist education of the masses. Only such propaganda ensures the greatest chances of national peace in Russia, should she remain a state of mixed nationalities, and the most peaceful (and, for the proletarian class struggle, harmless) division into separate national states, should the question of such a division arise.

To explain this policy, the only proletarian policy in the national question, more concretely, we shall examine the attitude of Great Russian liberalism towards the “self-determination of nations”, and the example of Norway’s secession from Sweden.