The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter Digest: The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up
This chapter, drawn from the July 1916 issue of Vorbote, synthesises the polemical exchange between the editorial boards of Sotsial-Demokrat and Gazeta Robotnicza on the urgent question of national self-determination, a debate continuous with earlier disputes of 1903 and 1913. The core argument is that the Polish social-democrats’ rejection of the right to secede constitutes a fundamental theoretical and political error—an “imperialist Economism” that mirrors the old Economism’s dismissal of political questions. By arguing that self-determination is inapplicable under socialism, since nations would become mere cultural-linguistic units and territorial division would be determined jointly according to production needs, the Polish comrades evade the central issue. Their substitution of “joint determination” in a common parliament for the right to secede is denounced as no different from Wilhelm II offering Belgians joint determination in a German parliament. The chapter insists that Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme confirms the state, including its frontiers, will persist during the transition to communism, and that Engels held frontiers of viable European nations to be determined by language and sympathies—frontiers imperialism breaks down, leaving socialism to restore democratic demarcation according to population sympathies.
The Polish comrades’ position is shown to be internally contradictory: they declare themselves against annexations yet oppose the liberation of annexed European nations, and their argument that “the starting-point of the struggle against annexations is renunciation of any defence of the fatherland” would rule out national revolts by annexed peoples, an objectively annexationist stance. Their theoretical error lies in treating imperialist economic concentration as justification for permanent annexations, a position Lenin identifies as Struveism, not Marxism. The chapter draws on historical evidence—Norway’s peaceful secession from Sweden in 1905 and the Irish Rebellion of 1916—to demonstrate that self-determination is practicable even under imperialism and that small nations act as ferments sharpening the revolutionary crisis. The Polish comrades’ claim that Marx contradicted himself by opposing Czech and South Slav independence is refuted: Marx favoured Polish independence against tsarism and opposed those nations as reactionary “Russian outposts,” the lesson being that democracy must be considered on a world scale and that no nation can be free if it oppresses others.
The concrete situation has changed between 1848–71 and 1898–1916: tsarism is no longer the chief reactionary mainstay, being supported by international finance capital and weakened by 1905, while a handful of imperialist powers now oppress other nations, splitting the proletariat into chauvinists and revolutionaries. The Polish programme of autonomy is reformist, leaving ruling-nation privileges intact; freedom to secede is revolutionary, abolishing them. The chapter concludes by distinguishing the specific position of Polish and Dutch social-democrats—comprehensible given their countries’ objective conditions as small, helpless between rival imperialist powers—from their erroneous general theoretical generalisations, which become objective opportunist support for Great-Russian imperialism when applied internationally. Outspoken social-imperialists like Lensch oppose self-determination outright, while Kautskyites like Trotsky and Martov hypocritically recognise it without fighting for secession for nations oppressed by tsarism, their evasiveness objectively supporting Russian social-imperialism.