The Right of Nations to Self-Determination

2. THE HISTORICALLY CONCRETE PRESENTATION OF THE
QUESTION

The categorical requirement of Marxist theory in investigating any
social question is that it be examined within definite historical
limits, and, if it refers to a particular country (e. g., the national
programme for a given country), that account be taken of the specific
features distinguishing that country from others in the same historical epoch.

What does this categorical requirement of Marxism imply in its
application to the question under discussion?

First of all, it implies that a clear distinction must be drawn between
the two periods of capitalism, which differ radically from each other as
far as the national movement is concerned. On the one hand, there is the
period of the collapse of feudalism and absolutism, the period of the
formation of the bourgeois-democratic society and state, when the national
movements for the first time become mass movements and in one way or
another draw all classes of the population into politics through
the press, participation in representative institutions, etc. On the other
hand, there is the period of fully formed capitalist states with a
long-established constitutional regime and a highly developed antagonism
between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie—a period that may be called
the eve of capitalism’s downfall.

The typical features of the first period are: the awakening of national
movements and the drawing of the peasants, the most numerous and the most
sluggish section of the population, into these movements, in connection
with the struggle for political liberty in general, and for the rights of
the nation in particular. Typical features of the second period are: the
absence of mass bourgeois-democratic movements and the fact that developed
capitalism, in bringing closer together nations that have already been
fully drawn into commercial intercourse, and causing them to intermingle to
an increasing degree, brings the antagonism between internationally united
capital and the international working-class movement into the forefront.

Of course, the two periods are not walled off from each other; they are
connected by numerous transitional links, the various countries differing
from each other in the rapidity of their national development, in the
national make up and distribution of their population, and so on. There can
be no question of the Marxists of any country drawing up their national
programme without taking into account all these general historical and
concrete state conditions.

It is here that we come up against the weakest point in Rosa
Luxemburg’s arguments. With extraordinary zeal, she embellishes her article
with a collection of hard words directed against §9 of our Programme,
which she declares to be “sweeping”, “a platitude”, “a metaphysical
phrase”, and so on without end. It would be natural to expect an author
who so admirably condemns metaphysics (in the Marxist sense, i.e.,
anti-dialectics) and empty abstractions to set us an example of how to make
a concrete historical analysis of the question. The question at issue is
the national programme of the Marxists of a definite country—Russia, in a
definite period—the beginning of the twentieth century. But does Rosa
Luxemburg raise the question as to what historical period Russia
is passing through, or what are the concrete features of the
national question and the national movements of that particular
country in that particular period?

No, she does not! She says absolutely nothing about it ! In her
work you will not find even the shadow of an analysis of how the national
question stands in Russia in the present historical period, or of
the specific features of Russia in this particular respect!

We are told that the national question in the Balkans is presented
differently from that in Ireland; that Marx appraised the Polish and Czech
national movements in the concrete conditions of 1848 in such and such a
way (a page of excerpts from Marx); that Engels appraised the struggle of
the forest cantons of Switzerland against Austria and the Battle of
Morgarten which took place in 1315 in such and such a way (a page of quotations from Engels with the appropriate comments
from Kautsky); that Lassalle regarded the peasant war in Germany of the
sixteenth century as reactionary, etc.

It cannot be said that these remarks and quotations have any novelty
about them, but at all events it is interesting for the reader to be
occasionally reminded just how Marx, Engels and Lassalle approached the
analysis of concrete historical problems in individual countries. And a
perusal of these instructive quotations from Marx and Engels reveals most
strikingly the ridiculous position Rosa Luxemburg has placed herself in,
she preaches eloquently and angrily the need for a concrete historical analysis of the national
question in different countries at different times, but she does not make the least attempt to determine what historical stage in
the development of capitalism Russia is passing through at the
beginning of the twentieth century, or what the specific features
of the national question in this country are. Rosa Luxemburg gives examples
of how others have treated the question in a Marxist fashion, as
if deliberately stressing how often the road to hell is paved with good
intentions and how often good counsel covers up unwillingness or inability
to follow such advice in practice.

Here is one of her edifying comparisons. In protesting against the
demand for the independence of Poland, Rosa Luxemburg refers to a pamphlet
she wrote in 1898, proving the rapid “industrial development of Poland”,
with the latter’s manufactured goods being marketed in Russia. Needless to
say, no conclusion whatever can be drawn from this on the question of the
right to self-determination; it only proves the disappearance of
the old Poland of the landed gentry, etc. But Rosa Luxemburg always passes
on imperceptibly to the conclusion that among the factors that unite Russia
and Poland, the purely economic factors of modern capitalist relations now
predominate.

Then our Rosa proceeds to the question of autonomy, and though her
article is entitled “The National Question and Autonomy” in general , she begins to argue that the Kingdom of Poland has an
exclusive right to autonomy (see Prosveshcheniye , 1913,
No. 12 [1] ).

To support Poland’s right to autonomy, Rosa Luxemburg evidently judges the
state system of Russia by her economic, political and sociological
characteristics and everyday life—a totality of features which, taken
together, produce the concept of “Asiatic despotism”. ( Przeglad No. 12, p. 137.)

It is generally known that this kind of state system possesses great
stability whenever completely patriarchal and pre-capitalist features
predominate in the economic system and where commodity production and class
differentiation are scarcely developed. However, if in a country whose state system is distinctly pre-capitalist in character there
exists a nationally demarcated region where capitalism is rapidly
developing, then the more rapidly that capitalism develops, the greater
will be the antagonism between it and the pre-capitalist state system, and
the more likely will be the separation of the progressive region from the
whole—with which it is connected, not by “modern capitalistic”, but by
“Asiatically despotic” ties.

Thus, Rosa Luxemburg does not get her arguments to hang together even
on the question of the social structure of the government in Russia with
regard to bourgeois Poland; as for the concrete, historical, specific
features of the national movements in Russia—she does not even raise that
question.

That is a point we must now deal with.

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Notes:
[1]

See pp. 45–51 of this volume.— Ed .