Volume 6, No. 12, December 2024
Editor: Rashed Rahman
In this section of the paper I attempt to develop an alternative Marxist theory of nationalism based on the principles of historical materialism. Going beyond the surface phenomena of national, religious and ethnic conflicts that mainstream social scientists have studied as determinants of social relations, I provide here a class analysis of the nature and dynamics of conflicts along national, religious and ethnic lines and attempt to develop an alternative theory that explains the root causes of such phenomena in class terms.
The Critique from within: Critics of Marxism
As I have pointed out in the previous section of this paper, it has been quite popular with mainstream bourgeois theorists and commentators to criticise Marxism for failing to come to terms with nationalism and the national question and for underestimating its potent force in effecting change. Bourgeois critics, in their zeal to undermine and discredit Marxism as a viable theory of society and social relations, have attempted time and again to undermine the legitimacy of Marxist social scientific inquiry as part of a sustained attack on Marxism throughout the Cold War years. A major ingredient of this anti-communist assault on Marxist theory during this period has been a concerted effort to refute the primacy of class – the central concept that informs the Marxist analysis of society and social relations. This bourgeois, conservative criticism of Marxism, which has a long history stretching back more than a century, is not surprising, nor unexpected, as it conforms to long-held views that have always been hostile to Marxism. What is disturbing and troublesome, however, is that this same kind of criticism of Marxism is also levelled by some self-styled ‘Marxists’ who have contributed to the anti-communist intellectual crusade aimed at discrediting Marxism for its ‘failure’ to address the complex issues surrounding nationalism and the national question, coupled with charges of class reductionism. Here one can include Tom Nairn, Benedict Anderson, Ernesto Laclau, Ephraim Nimni and Horace B Davis, among others. What is common to all these critics from within Marxism (and here is where their positions coincide with that of their conservative bourgeois counterparts) is their subjective, idealist conception of nationalism informed by an ethno-cultural analysis devoid of class.
Tom Nairn, in his book The Break Up of Britain, for example, claims that: “The theory of nationalism represents Marxism’s great historical failure.” 52 Adding to the list of ‘failures’, where he cites “Marxism’s shortcomings over imperialism, the state, the falling rate of profit and the immiseration of the masses are certainly old battlefields,” Nairn writes: “Yet none of these is as important, as fundamental, as the problem of nationalism, either in theory or in political practice.”53 To correct this situation, he offers the following insight: nationalism is an autonomous, ideological force that is based on an idea; it is an irrational response to general frustration.
Taking this critique a step further, Benedict Anderson, in his book Imagined Communities, asserts: “Nationalism has proved an uncomfortable anomaly for Marxist theory and, precisely for that reason, has been largely elided, rather than confronted.”54 And what is his great discovery that Marxists have failed to confront? The discovery that the nation is an imagined cultural community and nationalism is a product of the collective imagination that is as real as religion and cosmology!
Ernesto Laclau, in a recent commentary on Marxism and the national question that echoes Nairn’s and Anderson’s critique, boldly states: “Blindness to the national factor has been recurrent in the history of Marxism right from the beginning. These limitations are to be found even in the highest moments of Marxist theorization on the national question.” 55 Yet, Laclau is unable to offer a vision other than old, worn-out bourgeois rationalisations on the irrationality of nationalism that is as ideologically blind as he alleges Marxist theorising to be. Saturated with idealist conceptions emerging from abstract reasoning, nationalism to Laclau is no more real than those who believe it to be.
Ephraim Nimni, who credits Laclau’s work as having had a “profound influence” on his intellectual development, goes even further in his book Marxism and Nationalism in attacking Marxists for their “insensitivity” toward the “uniqueness of nationalist ideologies”, and says “the national question did not disappear because Marxists wished it to do so.” 56 Stemming from this criticism is Nimni’s attack on Marxism for its alleged “economic reductionism” – by which he means various aspects of superstructural phenomena are reflections of the economic base as “all meaningful changes within the social arena take place in the sphere of economic (class) relations” and that “economic relations of production are the unique source of causality.”57 Associated with this position is his indictment of Marxism for its “class reductionism”: “A class reductionist approach represents an important shift of emphasis within the same conceptual framework. Social classes are considered the only possible historical subjects so that ideologies and other superstructural phenomena (such as nationalism and the national arena in general) ‘belong’ to the paradigmatic area of influence of class position…Political and other activities may advance or delay (according to the circumstances) the outcome of the relations between classes (class struggle).”58 Much to his surprise, however, as to his bourgeois ideological counterparts, “The class reductionist paradigm,” writes Nimni, “has proven to be more resilient; it continues to inform influential contemporary Marxist discussion of the national question.”59
Earlier, in an effort to reformulate Marxist theory to account for certain political/ideological phenomena such as nationalism, Otto Bauer had conceptualised the nation and nationalism as an idea that is an autonomous force independent of class and class struggle – a position that was strongly criticised and rejected by Lenin and other classical Marxists. More recently, Horace B Davis attempted to develop a similar theory that gave equal weight to class and nation as forces that are functional in separate spheres of social consciousness in a parallel fashion.60 Despite Davis’s otherwise fine historical analysis of the issues surrounding the origins and development of nationalism, his attempt to revise Marxist theory to accommodate the nationalist problematic by assigning to it an autonomous status has led him in a similarly idealist direction that has undermined the development of a class-based materialist analysis of nationalism and the national question.
This theoretical error stemming from the logic of such analysis is repeated by another respected scholar of Marxism of long-standing, Eric Hobsbawm, who treats nationalism in similarly idealist terms.61 Hobsbawm’s view that nationalism is an irrational, invented ideology that is based on an imaginary allegiance to the nation independent of any direct link to class and social processes, places him, like Davis, in the company of critics such as Nairn, Anderson, Laclau and Nimni who have criticised classical Marxism for its “class reductionism”.
Notwithstanding these criticisms, the present study, as I have attempted to articulate in the pages of this article, makes a further contribution to a class-based Marxist theory of nationalism, the national question and national movements – one that is firmly rooted in class and class struggle as the motive force of social change and social transformation.
The Class Nature of Nationalism and National Movements
Contrary to the distorted critique of classical Marxism by some self- styled ‘Marxists’ who have turned to bourgeois, idealist modes of thought for answers, we argue here that nationalism and national movements are phenomena that cannot be studied in isolation without taking into account the social and class structure of the society in which they arise. National and ethnic divisions (as well as nationalist ideology, as an extension of such divisions) are manifestations of class conflicts and class struggles that are at base a reflection of social relations of production.62 “National relations,” writes G Glezerman, “cannot be understood outside of and independently of class relations.” This being the case, a class approach is one of the most important features inherent in the methodology of the Marxist analysis of social phenomena, including nations, national interests and national movements.63 “The division of society, or a nation, into classes,” Glezerman continues, “and the division of humanity into nations, nationalities, etc., have different historic roots. Yet relations between nations and classes cannot be viewed in isolation from each other.”64
Nations like classes are connected with a definite set of conditions of the material life of society. The material elements characteristic of a nation are common territory and, what is most important, a community of economic life, which unites all parts of the nation into a single whole. A nation is also characterised by the specific features of its spiritual life, certain national traits, a single language and national consciousness.65
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels devoted much time and effort to the study of the nature and dynamics of nationalism and the national question. Their analyses of the Irish national question, the anti-colonial revolts in India, and national uprisings elsewhere in Asia and the Middle East, as well as in other parts of the world, show the scope and depth of their understanding of the nature and role of national movements and struggles for national self-determination that they viewed to be part of the worldwide proletarian struggle against capitalism.66
Subsequently, V I Lenin, through his perceptive political analysis in linking the national and colonial questions to the worldwide expansion of imperialism, Marxist discourse on the national question and the right of nations to self-determination, took on its political significance as an aspect of the class struggle to facilitate the fight for socialism and social emancipation. 67 Lenin’s theses on the national and the colonial question were closely connected to his analysis of modern imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism. And this linkage, which laid bare the imperialist domination and oppression of colonised peoples and nations, led to the consequent response that set the stage for the struggle for national liberation.68
J V Stalin, following this tradition established by the Marxist classics, addressed the national question most directly by focusing on the concept of nation as the centerpiece of his study and analysis of nationalism and national self-determination. In Marxism and the National Question, Stalin summed up the characteristic features of a nation this way: “A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.”69 Placing it in historical context, Stalin situated the concept of nation within the framework of the evolution of capitalism and the capitalist state. With the expansion of capitalism on a world scale, and with the impact of capitalist imperialism on the colonies and neo-colonial territories that capitalism came to dominate throughout the world, Marxist theory subsequently incorporated during the period of the Third International a broader definition of the rise of nations and national movements that corresponded to developments in the latest stage of capitalist development – the age of modern imperialism. Thus, a broader reconceptualisation of the national question and national self-determination that would include nations colonised and oppressed by imperialism, provided the basis of a modified Marxist theory of nationalism that became the classic statement of the Marxist position on this question during the 20th century.
In this context, “The very processes of the formation of nations, the development of the national liberation movement, and the rise of national states,” writes Glezerman, “cannot be correctly understood without taking into consideration the class or classes which determine the social content of these processes and are their motive force.”70 Thus, “Nations as well as classes come into existence on the basis of the objective process of social development.”71
Marxist theory points out that the specific nature of class relations, which are based on relations of production, come to inform the nature and content of political struggles; such struggles, when they occur at the inter-national level, take the form of national struggles. Thus, while exploitative relations between two contending classes within a national territory take the form of an internal class struggle, a similar relationship at the international level manifests itself in the form of a national struggle. This struggle, which is the national expression of an international class struggle, is led by a particular class and is often based on an alliance of several classes unified for a common goal – national liberation and self-determination.72
The nature of the process for self-determination, which is characteristic of Third World anti-imperialist national liberation struggles, is quite different in the advanced-capitalist imperial centres of Europe and North America. In these regions, the struggles waged by national minorities against the central state tend to be demands for limited autonomy, self-rule, or similar such status within the boundaries of the larger federal structure – demands that fall short of full national independence and statehood. This has been the case, for example, in Quebec and the Basque Country, as well as Puerto Rico and Northern Ireland.73
In yet other instances, when the national question is raised within the context of a socialist state, we find an entirely different dynamic at work. In some cases, such as in China, nationalities policy may be framed within the context of national integration, which at the same time recognises cultural diversity and allows regional autonomy to various ethnic and nationality groups. In other cases, such as the former Soviet Union, some national groups may come to play a disproportionately dominant role, where the centre fails to deal with deep-seated national antagonisms inherited from an earlier period, which in time may give rise to the disintegration of the central state along national lines. However, while long-suppressed national aspirations under an otherwise seemingly cooperative federated state may engender nationalism and ethnic conflict, such as in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, it is important to stress again that here too a closer examination of these conflicts reveals the class nature of national struggles often fuelled by long-standing ethnic and religious divisions.74
Nationalism, National Movements, and Class Struggle
A few key substantive questions that lie at the heart of nationalism must be briefly raised to sort out the class nature of national movements and struggles for national self-determination. Thus, while all national movements possess characteristics that are historically specific, the central question that must be raised as theoretically applicable to all such struggles for national liberation is the necessity of a class analysis approach to the study of nationalism.
Nationalism, writes Albert Szymanski in his book Class Structure, “is the ideology that members of a nation, people, ethnic group, or ‘racial’ minority have more in common with each other than the various constituent classes of the group have with other people in similar class positions.”75 Moreover, ‘nationalism’ dictates that because of their postulated overriding common interest, all classes within the ethnic group, people, or ‘racial’ minority should work together economically and politically to advance their collective interests against other ‘nations’, ‘races’, ethnic groups, or peoples (even against those who are in the same classes). Nationalism is the advocacy of ethnic or ‘national’ solidarity and action over class consciousness and action. It is, thus, the opposite of class consciousness that argues solidarity should occur and political alliances be formed primarily along class lines (even against the relatively privileged groups within one’s subordinate ethnic group). Nationalism and class consciousness are, thus, alternative strategies of political action for gaining improvement in one’s life.76“In fact,” adds Szymanski, “nationalism is a product of class forces. Although different kinds of nationalism differ qualitatively in their effects, all serve some classes within a given racial or ethnic group as opposed to others.”77
The adoption of a class analysis approach to the study of nationalism, therefore, would entail an analysis of the class base of a particular national movement, the balance of class forces within it, and the class forces leading the movement. On this basis, one could determine the nature and future course of development of a national movement and whether a given movement is progressive or reactionary. Once the class character of a liberation movement and its leadership is thus determined, a political differentiation of various types of national movements can be ascertained, which in turn would provide us with clues to the social-political character of the movement in question.78 An understanding of the class nature of a given national movement may also inform us of the nature of the class forces that movement is struggling against, hence the nature and forms of the class struggle. The class content of the anti-imperialist liberation struggle, then, transforms the national struggle into a class struggle, which is fought out at the national and international levels. This struggle, which appears in the form of a national struggle, is, in essence, a struggle for state power.79 “If national struggle…is class struggle, [i.e.]…one very important form of the struggle for state power,” writes James Blaut, then a number of questions arise that are central to an understanding of nationalism and a national movement: “Which classes make use of it, in which historical epochs, and for which purposes?”80 Thus, through such an analysis, one can expect a relationship between the class character of a national movement, its political goals, and the nature and direction of the postindependence state following a successful national struggle.
In national struggles led by the petty bourgeoisie, for example, the class position of this segment of Third World societies often leads to an anti-imperialist liberation struggle in which the petty-bourgeois forces play a dominant role. In such situations, writes Szymanski, both sectors of the petty bourgeoisie tend to become nationalist because of their feelings of social humiliation and lack of fundamental control over their lives – a situation they can easily attribute to foreign domination. This class becomes disillusioned with the authoritarian rule of the transnational-local capitalist coalition. Its tendency is to increasingly support various nationalist opposition movements often in alliance with the working class and peasantry – movements to which they attempt to provide leadership.81
Since the class nature of the leadership of a movement is decisive in effecting the outcome of a particular struggle to take state power, the important question once again becomes the class nature of the social forces that wage the struggle for national liberation and lead the rest of society in a particular political direction.
Nationalism, Class Struggle and Social Transformation
National movements that are struggling for self-determination are also engaged in struggles against dominant class forces that are in control of the prevailing social system. As a result, national struggles often turn into class struggles where a subordinate, oppressed class comes to express its interests through a revolutionary movement aimed at taking state power. Such a movement is often led by a single class or an alliance of class forces whose interests are opposed to those who control the state. Thus, as I have pointed out elsewhere: “Class forces mobilized by the petty bourgeoisie and other intermediate sectors of society…have seized power by rallying people around a nationalist ideology directed against imperialism and its internal reactionary allies, the landlords and compradors…Revolutions led by worker-peasant coalitions against imperialism and local reaction have resulted in the establishment of socialist states.82 Hence, a national movement led by the national or petty bourgeoisie, i.e., bourgeois nationalism, can, when successful, set the stage for the building of a national capitalist state; an anti-imperialist national movement that is led by the working class in alliance with the peasantry, on the other hand, can, upon waging a successful national liberation struggle, begin building a popular socialist state.”83 In other instances, actions by a coalition of class forces that mobilises a variety of social classes through cross-class alliances aimed at capturing state power may, due to the absence of a clearly articulated class position, result in the transformation of society in an ‘ambiguous’ direction, such that in the absence of a clear and resolute action against existing social, political and economic institutions of society, the new order may soon lose its dynamism and become incorporated into the structures of the global political economy dominated by the imperialist states. Given the dominant role of imperialism today, it is important to recognise the force brought to bear by the imperialist states in shaping the nature and direction of such movements that have an immense impact on the balance of class forces at the global level. Such intervention by an external force becomes a crucial determinant of the class struggle when it is articulated through various internal class forces that are allied to it. An alliance of dominant classes at the global level is thus aimed at blocking the struggles of national movements in an effort to forestall the development of the class struggle that would transform the state and society and bring to power forces whose interests are contrary to and clash with those in control of the prevailing social order.
Today, the globalisation of capital has intensified the imperialist domination of the world, a process that is developing at a much more accelerated pace than in earlier periods of imperialist rule. The distinct feature of this most recent period of transnational expansion, however, is the contradictory nature of the national movements that imperialism has variously suppressed and supported. Thus, while in earlier periods of superpower rivalry with the Soviet Union various Third World national liberation movements confronted the brute force of the imperialist states (especially of US imperialism) that gave rise to a massive anti-imperialist movement across the globe, the transformations in the former Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist states during the course of the past decade have changed the dynamics of the global political economy, forcing revolutionary nationalist movements into a defensive position while providing bourgeois nationalist forces a newly found alliance with imperialism as in the former socialist states of Eastern Europe, in particular the former Yugoslavia, where a variety of bourgeois nationalist regimes have come to serve as new outposts of global capitalism that allows limited autonomy for local capitalist development within the context of a global political economy controlled by the imperialist states.
The contradictory nature of imperialist intervention, to suppress some nationalist movements and support yet others, highlights the politics of imperialist intervention that the globalisation of capital has fostered at century’s end – a situation that calls for a careful analysis of the class forces involved in contemporary nationalist movements variously opposed to or allied with US imperialism (e.g., Cuba vs. Croatia) that carries serious social and political consequences. Thus, the critical factor that distinguishes the nature and dynamics of contemporary forms of nationalism and national movements, then, is the class character of these movements and their class leadership, and the manner in which they are linked with or are opposed to imperialism. It is within this context of social-political developments in the struggle against the existing state and social-economic structures of society that we begin to delineate the nature and dynamics of ongoing class struggles and social transformations embarked on by the various national movements.
The Class Nature of Nationalism and National Movements: The Case of the Palestinian National Movement
The diverse settings in which struggles for autonomy, self-determination and national liberation take place necessitate a careful analysis of the relationship between class, state and nation – a relationship that is central to our understanding of the nature and dynamics of nationalism, class struggle and social transformation. It is thus within the framework of an understanding of the relationship between these phenomena that we discover the class essence of nationalism and national movements as manifested in different spatial, temporal and political contexts.
In this section of the paper I take up a brief analysis of the Palestinian national movement as a prominent case of nationalism and a national movement to explore its internal organisational structure in class terms. In so doing, I attempt to highlight the various tendencies within the Palestinian movement in the context of an anti-imperialist national liberation struggle that contains a multitude of class forces attempting to control and dominate the structure and direction of this movement.
The Palestinian national movement emerged in the early twentieth century following the collapse of the Ottoman state during WW I. Although unrest in the Province of Palestine directed against both the despotic Ottoman state and Zionist encroachments into the region had begun earlier in the previous century, it became further intensified during the British military occupation of Palestine following WW I. This was further fuelled by the creation of the State of Israel by the western powers in the aftermath of the victory over Nazi Germany at the conclusion of WW II.
The initial nationalist response to British occupation emerged from the discontent of the Palestinian masses against the structure of governance under colonial rule. This, coupled with the rise in Zionist armed provocations against the Palestinians during British rule, led to the strengthening of the Palestinian national movement.84 During the 1950s and 1960s, Palestinian nationalism took expression through the actions of several liberation organisations that operated in the diaspora. These included the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), founded by George Habash in the early 1950s, and Al Fatah, founded by Yasser Arafat in the late 1950s. Later, in the mid-1960s, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) emerged as an umbrella organisation that brought together various political tendencies in the diaspora and defined the nature of the liberation struggle during the 1960s.85 The emergence of the PLO and the continued presence of Fatah gave rise to the development of the National Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which engaged in military operations against Israel beginning in the mid-1960s. Armed operations by Palestinian commandos belonging to a number of other organisations were carried out against Israel throughout the 1960s.86 Among these, the best known was Al Fatah. However, in the late 1960s another important organisation, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was founded. The PFLP, and later its breakaway group Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP), became a direct rival of Al Fatah, competing for support among the Palestinian masses. The sharp politcal focus of PFLP and PDFLP, with their Marxist-Leninist ideological orientation, served to differentiate them from other organisations within the Palestinian resistance. Within a short time, they came to play a prominent role within the mass movement.87 On a broader level, the PLO, by the early 1970s, had come to represent most of the Palestinian organisations active in the national movement. This was also a period of growth of the Palestinian movement and a period that witnessed increased discussion and debate among the various movement organisations on the future course of the resistance.
During the 1970s and 1980s it became clear that the Palestinian national movement did not represent a single unified front or tendency, but that three rival factions within the movement came to represent three distinct class forces with a stake in the building of a future Palestinian state. These included: a populist/nationalist faction led by Arafat with support from the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie; a left-wing Marxist faction supported by the working class and the peasantry, and a right-wing Islamic fundamentalist faction supported by the landlords and the clergy. In the protracted internal political struggle between these rival forces over the course of the past two to three decades, the bourgeois nationalist forces prevailed, isolating and finally defeating both the Marxist challenge from the left and the fundamentalist challenge from the right, thus dominating the politics of the national movement up to its present bourgeois context in talks regarding national political autonomy and the eventual establishment of a bourgeois-led Palestinian national state. The internal factional struggles within the PLO and the mobilisation of class forces within the larger Palestinian society that fuelled these struggles are thus the manifestation of the broader class configuration of the social formations embroiled in the Arab-Israeli conflict at the heart of which lies the Palestinian national question – one that continues to occupy a central place in the politics of class and state in the Middle East.
Conclusion
I have argued in this paper that nationalism and national movements are a product of class relations and class struggles at both national and international levels. Countering classical and contemporary idealist formulations of the nation and nationalism as an ‘idea’ or ‘an imagined community’, I have argued that an analysis of the class nature of nationalism and national movements provides us with a better understanding of the nature, form and content of nationalism, as well as the nature and dynamics of the society that a given movement is struggling to build. In developing an alternative analysis of the relationship between class, state and nation, I have attempted to show that nationalism and national movements are a product of the interests of a particular class or classes (i.e., the national and petty bourgeoisies) who are the direct beneficiaries of this ideology that represents the position of these classes so as to further advance their narrow, nationally-based interests. I have shown this to be the case in my brief account of the internal dynamics of the Palestinian national movement as an example of a national movement that has not been immune to the logic of class relations and class struggles in the larger society. Stressing the importance of class analysis in examining the nature of nationalism and national movements, I have argued that we would be better able to comprehend these powerful and persistent phenomena if we adopt a class perspective that is grounded in the principles of historical materialism.88
Notes
The writer teaches at the Department of Sociology, University of Nevada, Reno, USA.
Comment (1)
Sydnee Feeney
06 Nov 2024 - 1:03 pmYour writing is a true testament to your expertise and dedication to your craft. I’m continually impressed by the depth of your knowledge and the clarity of your explanations. Keep up the phenomenal work!