The Internationalist Communist Tendency has posted a translation of the 1915 "Theses on Imperialism" authored by Karl Radek and fellow Polish comrades.
It shows that a genuinely marxist position on national liberation (and every other question) has nothing to do with abstract principles, and is instead about developing the revolutionary strength of the working class.
This is relevant today as the left drives the working class into this or that imperialist camp (Russian, Ukrainian, Palestinian, Israeli, etc), all in the name of the "right of national self-determination" or of weakening this or that state even at the cost of crushing the proletariat's class consciousness.
"Today, in light of the experience of the world war, the adoption of the slogan of independence as a means of struggling against national oppression would be not only a damaging utopia, but the denial of the simplest foundations of socialism. This slogan would mean striving to create a new imperialist power, a power that would itself strive to subjugate and oppress foreign nations. The only result of such a programme would be the weakening of class consciousness, the exacerbation of national contradictions, the division of the forces of the proletariat, and the amplification of new dangers of war."
Add comment