1916. Zurich

Dr. Paul Lench: “Talk about self-determination* (“Die Glocke” No. 8, 1915, December 15).
... “A petty-bourgeois whim” (p. 465) —
is the same as “disarmament.”
“A p e t t y b o u r g e o i s t F r a z a” (the same) is also
the same as “a disarmament fiasco,”
as well as “the right to labor” and so on.
For example,
Engels, in the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung” on February 14, 1849, wrote about “democratic Pan-Slavism”** (p. 466), that “the word ‘freedom’ replaces everything,” merely an “absolute demand for freedom,” a “fantastic abstraction from reality”—and Lench:
“just such a fantastic abstraction from reality as the talk about the right to self-determination” (467)...
Engels then wrote that “the theory of universal brotherhood among peoples, disregarding historical conditions and the level of social development of individual nations, seeks only to be brotherly in general” (467)...
and then against “Bakunin’s expressions about terrible violence against the South Slavs.”
See Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XIX, p. 43, note. Ed.
** See Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. VII, pp. 203–212; cited passages on pp. 205, 207, 210, 211–212. Ed.
from the side of the Hungarians and Germans.” — So what
does Engels say here?
That it is laughable to call “a crime”
what the Germans and Magyars did—“at a time when, throughout Europe, large monarchies had become a historical necessity”—when they united these nationalities into one great state “and thereby made them capable of participating in historical development”... “And how are Persians, Celts, and Christian Germans any worse than Czechs, Bulgarians, or Serbs?” (467).
And Lench triumphantly declares: “This is what ‘the right to self-determination’ looks like in Marx and Engels!” (p. 468). I recommend this to the illiterate socialists on the editorial board of “Vorwarts.”
“In reality, talk about the right to self-determination is essentially alien to socialism... Socialism is the idea of the dependence of the particular upon the universal...
The theory of individualism created ‘self-determination,’ ... yet it was intended to be applied by ‘the most ardent opponents of democracy’ (470),
for example, Napoleon III.
“The experiment of 1859 (Napoleon’s farcical attempt at popular voting on the annexation of Nice:
Bernstein, in his afterword to Erlich’s work, ‘ironically’
dismissed it)
was so acceptable to absolutism that even Bismarck was initially ready to repeat the experiment
in the provinces conquered after the Danish War” (470).
NB HI
| cf. Engels on the same N V |
and further on “n a i v n o .i” (472) regarding self-determination, etc. = “a petty-bourgeois idyll” (ibid.). And how can this be practically implemented (p. 473)? For example, in the Balkans? A mixture of parodies, etc.
No, we must not
“allow the crippling of the living conditions of major cultural nations—those which have until now been bearers of historical progress”—for the sake of some “tender national flower” (as Engels put it) (473) and so on—nations that “allowed themselves to be used as powerless tools of tsarism and reaction.”
And now Serbia... the progressive central powers are interested in reaching the sea...
social-democratic enemy
“of the economy of small cantons” (474)...
Alsace-Lorraine, for French socialists, is merely an attempt “to get out of a difficult situation” (ibid.).
For Germany, Alsace and Lorraine are necessary (476), and “the S.D. faction” was “entirely justified”
when it completely excluded talk of self-determination in its August II NB
theses on the Alsace-Lorraine question.’
C
(476).
|
Engels wrote in 1891 that between socialist France and socialist Germany, the Alsace-Lorraine question could not “arise.” “The misunderstanding can be resolved in an instant”—you may wait up to the hour of the proletariat’s liberation (476).
He also stated: “Socialism and past annexations” (ibid., JSIs 9, January 1, 1916).
“Against annexations?” (494–495) This cry calls for “Marxist criticism”... against all kinds of conquests? j
Marx and Engels stood on the position of “European democracy” against phrases such as “disarmament,
the right of peoples to self-determination, and no kind of annexations” (496).
“S v y a z  ъ*
NB
Marx and Engels called England a “counter-revolutionary” force in the world war.
“The Neue Rheinische Zeitung” (1848–9, Volume III of the “Literary Heritage,” p. ?*), stated that the general war would crush “entire reactionary peoples” (497)...
and there too, Engels wrote: “From us and other revolutionary nations of Europe, we are required to ensure that counter-revolutionary hordes can exist unhindered right at our doorstep.”
“We must create a counter-revolutionary Czech state in the heart of Germany, we must break the power of German, Polish, and Magyar revolutions with Russian outposts wedged between them... As for sentimental phrases about brotherhood...
we respond that hatred of Russians has been—and still remains—the first revolutionary passion of the Germans” ** (497–498)...
And in 1859, Engels, writing in “Po i Rein,” stated that border changes (in Europe) amount to increasingly granting “large and viable European nations ever more genuine, natural borders determined by language and sympathies” ***... (while smaller nations should be annexed; during the revision of Europe’s political map, Germany should receive all its rights)... .
And Lench continues:
“Incidentally, it is strange that precisely those comrades who today readily repeat the words: ‘the proletarian has no fatherland’—in the current world war seem not to
NB
NB
NB
be a good example of sophistry! I
* See Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. VII, p. 282. Ed.
** Ibid., Vol. VII, p. 219. Ed.
See Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XIX, pp. 243–244. Engels’ article “Po i Rein” is included in Marx and Engels, Vol. XI, Part 2, pp. 1–10. Ed.
know only one concern besides giving each proletarian an independent fatherland and, in any case, doing everything possible to prevent any “fatherland” from disappearing off the world map” (499–500).
“But the interests of the working class
require that ‘every three miles a new ‘nation’ should begin’—and in practice, this would amount to the theory of the right to self-determination” (500), for example, large economic entities and so on-----------------((end of excerpts)).
pearl!!