This has inevitably led to a series of uninformed takes from what we can dub not only the online left but also the “real” left. They argue that we should never support or fight for any nationalist liberation movements ever—for example, that Palestinians should just give up their national struggle and join in common with the Israeli and world proletariat. Essentially, these people ask Palestinians to die and be eradicated, whether they believe it or not; they seem to be in some kind of ideological delusion. Others argue that all revolutions against neocolonialism are Mussolinist, class collaborationist, or some other nonsense. This has even bled into the real world when Lotta Communista (who are universally hated), an Italian communist party, began attacking pro-Palestinian demonstrators in the name of Marx! These people essentially believe that all working men of all nations should wake up one day, forgo the very real limiting effects of colonialism, realize their role as the proletariat, and overthrow the nation-state.

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Early Marxist Views and Contradictions

One of the earliest people to take this Marxist view on national liberation struggles was Rosa Luxemburg. Luxemburg contended that all national liberation struggles were reactionary and, therefore, Irish and Polish national liberation struggles against Tsarist Russia and England should not have been supported. She even went as far as to call this kind of struggle utopian.

However, as Lenin pointed out, this stance was against the very basic preaching’s of Marx himself. As Marx wrote of liberation struggles going on during his time, such as in Ireland:

“..The way I shall put forward the matter next Tuesday is this: that quite apart from all phrases about “international” and “humane” justice for Ireland – which are to be taken for granted in the International Council – it is in the direct and absolute interest of the English working class to get rid of their present connection with Ireland. And this is my most complete conviction, and for reasons which in part I cannot tell the English workers themselves. For a long time I believed that it would be possible to overthrow the Irish regime by English working class ascendancy. I always expressed this point of view in the New York Tribune. Deeper study has now convinced me of the opposite. The English working class will never accomplish anything before it has got rid of Ireland. The lever must be applied in Ireland. That is why the Irish question is so important for the social movement in general.”

— Letter from Marx to Engels In Manchester 1869

Likewise, as Lenin pointed out to Rosa Luxemburg:

“Marx questions a socialist belonging to an oppressor nation about his attitude to the oppressed nation and at once reveals a defect common to the socialists of the dominant nations (the English and the Russian): failure to understand their socialist duties towards the downtrodden nations, their echoing of the prejudices acquired from the bourgeoisie of the ‘dominant nation’…….The conclusion that follows from all these critical remarks of Marx’s is clear: the working class should be the last to make a fetish of the national question, since the development of capitalism does not necessarily awaken all nations to independent life. But to brush aside the mass national movements once they have started, and to refuse to support what is progressive in them means, in effect, pandering to nationalistic prejudices, that is, recognizing ‘one’s own nation’ as a model nation (or, we would add, one possessing the exclusive privilege of forming a state).”

— The Right of Nations to Self-Determination V.I. Lenin

Finally when some Marxist called the Irish rebellions of 1916 a ‘mere Putsch’ Lenin responded

To imagine that social revolution is conceivable without revolts by small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie with all its prejudices, without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against oppression by the landowners, the church, and the monarchy, against national oppression, etc. – to imagine all this is to repudiate social revolution. So one army lines up in one place and says, ‘We are for socialism’, and another, somewhere else and says, ‘We are for imperialism’, and that will be a social revolution! Only those who hold such a ridiculously pedantic view could vilify the Irish rebellion by calling it a ‘putsch’.

Whoever expects a ‘pure’ social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip-service to revolution without understanding what revolution is.

-The Irish Rebellion of 1916 V.I. Lenin

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The Role of Nationalism and the Path to Revolution

In essence, yes, nationalism is a bourgeois mechanism; it does contain a seed of reaction within all nationalisms (even Palestinian, Irish, etc.). However, nationalism is also a tool. When colonized nations fight against their colonizers, nationalism becomes a powerful force for moving history forward toward the breakdown of the nation-state itself. The concept of contradictions transforming into their opposites has never been something shied away from by the Marxist movement.

Within this relation, it is inconceivable to get rid of the nation-state immediately. We must use the nation-state movements of colonized countries to cut off the heads of the beasts of colonialism and imperialism, which then allows for international proletarian movements that are truly able to end the concept of the nation-state itself (along with money, classes, commodity production, etc.). In essence we must use nationalism (liberation struggles) to end the nation state itself, just as we must use war to end war itself. Likewise, as Marx pointed out, independence of colonized nations from their colonizers strengthens, not harms, proletarian revolution, as it allows the working classes within colonizer nations to fight their own bourgeoisie hand in hand on an international scale much more easily.

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Distinguishing Revolutionary Struggles

Does this mean, then, that all national liberation struggles are revolutionary? Of course not! Those that fundamentally challenge predominant imperialist structures, like the struggle in Palestine, are invariably revolutionary. In fact, it is unimaginable for the American working class to ever rid itself of the beast that is capitalism until it rids itself of the gnarly, wretched beast and “unsinkable aircraft carrier” that is Israel and its various other neocolonial colonies.

However, a liberation struggle like Ukraine, which is tied to a fight between two opposing capitalist blocs (Russia vs. NATO), would require the correct communist position to be revolutionary defeatism—to support neither side and try to turn this war into a class war at home.

The struggle that the Emir of Afghanistan is waging for the independence of Afghanistan is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the monarchist views of the Emir and his associates, for it weakens, disintegrates and undermines imperialism; whereas the struggle waged by such “desperate” democrats and “Socialists,” “revolutionaries” and republicans as, for example, Kerensky and Tsereteli, Renaudel and Scheidemann, Chernov and Dan, Henderson and Clynes, during the imperialist war was a reactionary struggle, for its results was the embellishment, the strengthening, the victory, of imperialism

-J.V. Stalin Foundations of Leninism Ch. 6

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Dual Proletarian Movements

Does this mean that we within the “imperial core” should sit around and do nothing? No! The correct position would be dual proletarian movements linked by internationalism that both support the right to the self-determination of nations while also pushing for revolution at home. If we can achieve revolution within “imperial core” countries, it will always make our jobs a lot easier, and there may be breaks and gaps within them that allow us to do so.

Does this mean the ideal is “global south” movements that replace the comprador bourgeoisie with the national bourgeoisie? No! The most favorable outcome of all national liberation struggles would be their continual revolution from national bourgeois to proletarian, a radical shift in their relations of production, and a linkage of these new proletarian experiments to international solidarity, perhaps even a spread of these revolutions globally if possible.

As nice as ideals may be, ultimately, as historical materialists, we must contend with the world we do live in, not the one we want. That means working within our concrete conditions in order to turn our world into the one we want, not retreating into our idealist delusion to turn the world we do not want into the same one we started with. Otherwise like in the cautionary tale of Lotta Communista we may end up being the co-battering rams as fascist genocidal thugs, isolated from the very proletariat we wish to free, within abstractions of abstractions of abstractions of communist theory so deep that we end up aiding an active genocide with the hope that we can magically overcome it.

Are all so called ‘internationalists’ by default revolutionary? Well as Marx certainly said

For us the national flag is a rag to be planted on a dunghill. There are only two fatherlands in the world: that of the exploited and that of the exploiters

Except that was not Marx it was Mussolini (Wikiquotes).