Abstract
Marx was an internationalist, who believed in the primacy of the productive forces and the centrality of class struggle. He wrote little directly on nations and nationality, but what he did write was with clarity and common sense. His most widely quoted passages, unfortunately, have been mistranslated and misinterpreted. Interpreters’ confusions about internationalism, universalism, the state, and globalization continue to affect the understanding of nationalism in Marx’s work and elsewhere.
For Marx, nations were important in capitalism and in transitional societies and would be in future communism. Some aspects of nations were made explicit by Marx, while others clearly fit his developed ideas. There is no reason to think that Marx would expect people to abandon their nation and nationality in seeking communism.
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Notes
- 1.
Marx himself draws a similar analogy in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 where he talked about a renter finding “himself in someone else’s house” (MECW 3, p. 314). Benner also points out that Marx was probably disavowing the “highly charged political connotations” of the word Vaterland which “was used by both defenders of the traditional state and the Romantic prophets of ethnic nationality” ( Benner 1995, p. 54).
- 2.
Norman Davies does write about many particular nations having vanished, but not all nations. Davies “remind[s us] of the transience of power, [a] fundamental characteristic both of the human condition and the political order…. All states and nations, however great, bloom for a season and are replaced” ( Davies 2012, p. 5), although this does not apply to communist futures. In Davies’ view, it is an underestimate that there are 207 “extinct states in Europe’s past” (p. 732).
There are also nations that may be in the process of being born, such as those of the former Yugoslavia, Quebec, Scotland, Wales, Catalonia, Tibet, Palestine, Kurdistan, Cyprus.
- 3.
Michael Löwy notes the idea of antagonisms in this passage, but still finds in “Marx and Engels’ writings … the hope of a future communist cosmopolis, a ‘world city’ without frontiers, a universal Gemeinshaft, an international socialist federation, in which not only national antagonisms and conflicts would disappear but also the economic, social and political (but not cultural) differences between nations” ( Löwy 1989, p. 222). National characteristics should be more enriched and could have the other characteristics in the right forms, as I argue below.
- 4.
In this case the unnoted shift (in German) from abschaffen (abolish) to aufheben (transcend dialectically) appears of no significance compared to other unmarked occurrences in this part. For example, in the Manifesto (MECW 6, p. 498), Marx and Engels wrote about the communists abolishing (aufheben, i.e. transcending) private property when they were reproached with wanting to abolish (abschaffen, i.e. do away with) it. For some purposes this distinction can be crucial.
- 5.
- 6.
The exception is the useful discussion by Forman (1999, esp. pp. 241–246).
- 7.
Several years ago many Cypriots told me that the native Cypriots are one people, even though most are monolingual speakers of either Turkish or Greek. In Wales there are Welsh nationalists (for the nation and the nationality) who do not speak Welsh, but are united, as I heard in a couple of cases, through rugby.
- 8.
The case of Africa in general is well discussed by Basil Davidson (1992). See Mahmoud Mamdani (1996) for an excellent discussion of the political determination of “national” differences in Rwanda. For a good discussion of the complex issues of nationality in India, see Chatterjee (1995) and Jangam (2017).
- 9.
See, for example, Barry (1987).
- 10.
Liah Greenfeld argues that German “[n]ationalism molded by the Romantic vision and widely shared, formed the foundation of Marx’s thought” ( Greenfeld 1992, p. 390). Greenfeld’s subsequent discussion of Marx replacing the idea of a nation with that of a class is marred by misinterpretations, but there is useful discussion about nationalism in Germany at the time. I find similar problems in Szporluk’s (1988) otherwise useful study.
- 11.
For the German, I have used “Karl Marx – Friedrich Engels, Werke” (Berlin: Dietz Verlag). This quote comes from volume 3 (1969), p. 458.
- 12.
There is an occurrence of the word in a letter of Engels, but the German was Internationalität rather than Internationalismus (MECW 27, p. 402). Marx never used the term “historical materialism” although it is appropriate for his “ materialist conception of history.” The absence of a term is not decisive.
- 13.
On Connor’s (questionable) interpretation of nationalism as being about “the most fundamental divisions of humankind” ( Connor 1984, p. 5), Marx would not be a nationalist.
- 14.
- 15.
On the importance of the national question in Ireland, about which Marx confessed to Engels (MECW 43, p. 398) that he had changed his mind, see MECW (21, pp. 84–91 and 112–124) and MECW (43, pp. 389–399). See also Benner (1995, pp. 186–187).
- 16.
Marx focused on cooperating internationally rather than giving aid to people of other nations, as did, for example, Albert Schweitzer and Norman Bethune.
- 17.
In an early (1845) piece, Engels did talk about proletarians being “antinational,” not antinationalist, as in the translation (MECW 6, p. 6).
- 18.
- 19.
Cocks sees this as a question and a conundrum for Marx, but I think her vision is clouded by a restrictive account of Marx as an antinationalist and universalizing internationalist .
- 20.
- 21.
That Marx did not talk about “ false consciousness” and would not think of nationalism in this way is nicely discussed by Cocks (1997).
- 22.
Löwy uses “ideology” as necessarily negative, while I think it is better understood in an epistemologically neutral and political sense.
- 23.
The speaker “addressed [the International Council] in ‘French’, i.e., in a language which 9/10 of the audience did not understand” (MECW 42, p. 287; Marx to Engels in 1866).
- 24.
But it should be noted that Anderson also gives weight to the importance of functionaries, the media, and various structures of the state. These make it sound more objective and not simply a matter of subjective imagination (see, e.g. Anderson 1991, pp. 65 and 160).
- 25.
It may be true of some Marxists, but not of Marx, that there was a “fetish of making sense of every significant social phenomenon by subsuming it within the logic of the universal development of the forces of production” ( Nimni 1991, p. 3). Munck (1986, pp. 163–166) agrees with Nimni on this. For some criticism of Nimni’s interpretation of Marx as an economic reductionist, see Purvis (1996, pp. 42ff).
- 26.
This is precisely the view that Cohen approves of but withholds from Marx: that “locally produced cultural objects become globally available.” On the other hand, I see no evidence that Marx thought that the relation of people will be “on a world scale, not in addition to but instead of finding special fellowship in particular cultures” ( Cohen 2001, p. 354).
- 27.
Again Marx has been badly translated. In his Critique of the Gotha Programme , Marx spoke of the Staatswesen, which is the essence of the state rather than the state itself.
- 28.
- 29.
See Davies (2012) on the death of nations and vanished kingdoms. A common giveaway of English prejudice is to say that Wales does not have a history as a nation. The response is that they have a long history that any Welsh text will adumbrate about the people’s language, culture, and community.
- 30.
Benner (1995, pp. 165f) does give reason to doubt that Marx followed his close collaborator in these attitudes.
- 31.
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Ware, R.X. (2019). Nationalism and Internationalism. In: Marx on Emancipation and Socialist Goals. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97716-4_7
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