The Right of Nations to Self-Determination¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter Digest: The Right of Nations to Self-Determination¶
In this polemical chapter, Lenin defends Clause 9 of the RSDLP programme, which recognises the right of all nations to self-determination, against attacks from opportunists who parrot Rosa Luxemburg’s arguments from her 1908–09 article ‘The National Question and Autonomy’. He insists that the question must be approached through concrete historical and economic analysis, not abstract legal definitions. For Lenin, the formation of national states is the typical and normal requirement of capitalism in its progressive, bourgeois-democratic phase, when national movements become mass movements striving for political independence. Self-determination therefore means the right to political secession and the formation of an independent national state.
Lenin sharply distinguishes between two periods of capitalism: the first, of bourgeois-democratic revolution and national unification, which in Western Europe was largely completed by 1871; and the second, of fully formed capitalism, where class antagonism comes to the forefront. In Eastern Europe and Asia, however, bourgeois-democratic revolutions began only in 1905, producing national movements that demand independent states. Luxemburg’s error, Lenin argues, is to ignore this historical specificity and to compare Russia with Western Europe or Austria, where national relations are fundamentally different. In Russia, the Great Russians are the oppressor nation, and the subject peoples inhabit border regions, are often more developed, and have compatriots across frontiers. These concrete features make recognition of self-determination urgent.
Lenin also refutes Luxemburg’s dismissal of the Norwegian secession from Sweden as mere peasant particularism. He argues that a Marxist analysis must examine the concrete historical circumstances: Norway was ceded against its will, and after decades of friction, a referendum produced an overwhelming vote for separation. The Norwegian proletariat had to support peasant democracy against the Swedish aristocracy, while the Swedish proletariat had to demand Norway’s freedom to secede, thereby strengthening fraternal class solidarity. Marx’s treatment of Irish independence provides a further model: Marx initially believed Ireland would be liberated by the English working class, but later concluded that the English working class would never be free until Ireland was freed from English rule. He therefore advocated Irish separation, even if federation followed.
Lenin excoriates the Great-Russian liberal bourgeoisie, exemplified by the Cadet party, which opposes the right to secede while paying lip-service to ‘cultural self-determination’. He exposes the logical absurdity of their position: recognising the right to secession reduces, not increases, the danger of state disintegration, just as recognising the right to divorce strengthens family ties on a democratic basis. The opportunists among the Marxists in Russia—Semkovsky, Liebman, Yurkevich—who oppose the right to self-determination are following the national-liberals and corrupting the working class with national-liberal ideas.
The working class requires complete solidarity across all nations and must resist bourgeois nationalist policy. Social-democrats would subordinate workers to bourgeois policy if they either repudiate the right of oppressed nations to secede, or support all national demands of the oppressed-nation bourgeoisie. The hired worker is indifferent to which bourgeoisie exploits him; successful struggle against exploitation demands proletarian neutrality in inter-bourgeois national rivalries. Repudiating the right to secession means supporting the dominant nation’s privileges. Lenin concludes that the task is to preserve proletarian unity while recognising full equality and the right to secession, and to combat Great-Russian nationalism above all. Refusing to advocate self-determination is now inexcusable opportunism.