Doesn't this concept directly contradict the goals of communism (uniting the world under proletarian rule)? Why should communists value arbitrary borders and "independent self rule" of different nations? Doesn't this just open opportunity for infighting and sabotage?
Look at Hoxha vs Mao vs USSR vs Tito for example.
Look at how Yugoslavia fell apart. I doubt things would have went as terribly if Tito was more ruthless towards eradicating ethnic nationalism.
Other urls found in this thread:
marxists.org
marxists.org
twitter.com
Uniting the world under proletarian rule is necessary to make meaningful self-determination possible. How far did any of those conflicting states actually get in determining themselves? Their conflict only meant that they were all the more determined by each other. Hoxha didn't build all those bunkers because he thought it fit the character of his nation, after all.
It contradicts communism, not socialism.
Today Tito is accused of destroying the different nationalities. The story goes that you couldn't even declare yourself to be Croatian, or Serbian, because you'd go to prison. The reality is that only 10-15% of people declared themselves as Yugoslav on their passports, the rest used their nationality.
Yugoslavia was made stronger by diversity of cultures. Brotherhood and Unity.
Honestly it depends on the situation. If you can join nations together into a single confederation on a largely voluntary basis then you should, and nationalism should be discouraged in favour of a patriotism that encompasses the entire union. However old habits die hard, and just because a country may adopt a socialist orientation does not mean it’s willing to relinquish its national identity and independence. In this case you can’t simply impose anti-nationalism on them, since it will spur resentment and possibly rebellion, and drive them into the arms of reaction. This is exactly what happened in Hungary in 1956, where the people were fine with socialism, but intensely hostile to Soviet meddling in their affairs.
It's literally in Article 39 of the Soviet Consitution
That's all you need to know.
Tbqh circa 1917 this was still the consensus in revolutionary Marxist circles, and you can see the legacy of that in the Soviet ('Council') Union: a truly internationalist state with no pretenses to a specific national heritage, which abandoned all national heraldry and symbols, which insisted on the union of disparate nationalities for the welfare of the underprivilidged often at the expense of the better off. The Soviet Union might be the only historical example of the real actual practice of radical proletarian internationalism. GOSPLAN brought invaluable infrastructural development to central Asian steppe peoples, raised literacy from the low tens to high nineties in the most backwater regions of the former tsardom, housed peasants of all national backgrounds and provided for their education free of charge while insuring a job for every single individual that sought one no matter what language they spoke.
Self-determination is a principle which exists in Leninism as a matter of practicality only. It is hard to justify supranational governance to peoples who have lived and died by their nationality, who have been oppressed or excused their own vile deeds on the basis of heritage. It was hoped that this could be cured by replacing nationalism with socialist patriotism, but I suppose the 80s proved that hypothesis to be somewhat flawed. Maybe it would have been better after all to do away with the concept of federation altogether for a monolithic democratic central government, but who can say if such a thing could be popularly supported in the first place, much less survive where the real USSR failed.
This may seem like an issue now but capitalism, the very creator of modern nation-states, has begun to transcend them with the rise of global capitalism. Just see supranational blocks such as the EU, more and more open borders and international agreements. The nation-state itself will in time become obsolete, especially as culture itself becomes globalized, a globalized consumer culture begins to form, etc. Self-determination in current conditions can be understandable, especially in cases of genuine oppression by other ethnic groups, but besides that it is reactionary.
Mark my words, Europe will furter consolidate and expand and eventually a North American Union will form, or if Mexico is excluded the integration of America and Canada
This. National self determination isn’t an ideological goal, it’s just a practical manner of dealing with the reality of clashing national and cultural identities.
So many baboon in communist propaganda. Why communists want boons to society? we do not want racemixing with the regaton people Byebye boons to society! Shoo, shoo to the zoo.
note, I am not the actual baboon poster, I just find his shitposts hilarious
Reminder that Yugoslavia is a unique case and cannot be boiled down to either "destroy the nationalities" or "embrace the diveristy."
More that I find his existence and persistence hilarious.
Do White people have the right to self determination?
Basically, what Lenin is saying is that the right to self determination is necessary because solidarity between the oppressed and the oppressor is impossible. It is only when nations are on "equal ground" that they can band together in reality. You might object and say that the very idea of the nation is simply an abstraction and should be abolished. While the state is an abstraction, it is an abstraction that emerges out of real material conditions, and cannot disappear until those material conditions have been completely changed. So in the dictatorship of the proletariat, in order to promote the general unity between proletarians, one must ensure that the proletarians belonging to an oppressed nation do not feel like they are having a new system being forced upon them from the outside. They must feel it as their own choice, their own freedom. It is only through this process that national divisions can eventually be broken down.
Lenin himself actually met with this dilemma. He was disinclined to forcibly annex Georgia, which had become an independent democratic republic under Menshevik rule, with a rather weak domestic Bolshevik movement (in contrast to say, Azerbaijan). However, Georgian members of his party (such as Stalin) pushed for it hard and set things in motion on their own initiative (Lenin was seriously ailing at that point). Only then did he publicly endorse it, while privately holding reservations.
Here are two historical writings on the topic you raised. One is from the ABCs of Communism by Bukharin et al., and was a semi-official statement of Bolshevik policy in 1919. Whether you agree with it or not, it does give a detailed answer to your question. The other is a somewhat related speech delivered by Lenin in the same year.
marxists.org
marxists.org
White people aren't a nation, that's like asking if Asians have the right to self-determination lol
So jews aren't a nation? Why do they have Israel?
No one here likes Israel dude
It's better to spread socialism by propaganda and demonstrating its superiority in living conditions anyway. War is a great evil and if you've lost sight of that, you don't remember what being a leftist really means.
There are people on this board who unironically think that invading foreign countries and imposing socialism on them even when their workers don't want it is a good idea.
The built in censorship here and ban hammer crazy mod says otherwise.
You get the ban for supporting Israel here though.
...
Every knee must bow before socialism. Self-determination only works as a political concept and shpuld not be
treated as though it has any real theoretical function. We should tolerate other states until we can dominate them and liberate the working class there.
Spreading socialism through earning the support of workers and helping them overthrow their government is good. Spreading “socialism” through imposing it on workers who lack the class consciousness to want it is obviously bad. Such a situation would preclude proletarian democracy, and as a result not be a genuine dictatorship of the proletariat, allowing corruption and revisionism to fester and destroy the country. It would also alienate workers elsewhere and damage the image and standing of socialism. Revolution can only come from below.
Exactly. I like tanks and jets and other sexy war machines as much as anyone, but I still understand that ethically they are evil. You can separate your visceral, primitive, fascist-like impulse to 'hehehehhh, I wanna go kill someone', and for honour, and whatever else, from the intellectual part of your mind that accepts that warfare needs to be the last resort, always. I mean in how many wars in history was the aggressor actually in the right? Barely any of them, by modern understanding.
If socialism is to succeed at all, we have to focus on making it succeed inside our own hypothetical territories, if we can't convince the outside world then how do we have the moral authority to make war on them anyway? We need to demonstrate our success to the extent that it can no longer be denied.
It's not just a question of ethics. It's the most basic rule of statecraft that a regime cannot function without the consent of the population, and regimes imposed by a foreign invasion almost never last in the long term. Socialism imposed through invasion would only intensify the reactionary and nationalist sentiments of the population, and produce an army of counterrevolutionaries drawn from ordinary workers. It would also necessarily be undemocratic, and thus susceptible to corruption and revisionism, and not a genuine worker's state. Even from a purely practical perspective, the imposition of socialism through an invasion can only bring a shaky, unstable, and unpopular vassal state, that will inevitably collapse into a stronghold of reaction.
It was just a meme to prevent nationalist movements from joining american side in the cold war but some leftist took it seriously and now defend fascist dictatorships and islamic theocracies instead of socialists revolutions that got military aid from america.