Self-determination, national liberation, and the struggle against imperialism.
The national question is one of the most important problems facing the revolutionary movement. It concerns the relationship between nations, national minorities, and oppressed peoples under capitalism and imperialism — and the correct Marxist-Leninist position on national self-determination, national liberation movements, and the struggle against national oppression.
Lenin and Stalin both made major contributions to the Marxist understanding of the national question. Stalin's 1913 work Marxism and the National Question provided the foundational definition: 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.
The national question cannot be understood in isolation from the class question. National oppression is a tool of the bourgeoisie — it divides the working class, provides cheap labour from oppressed nations, and creates markets for imperialist plunder. The struggle against national oppression is therefore inseparable from the struggle against capitalism.
Marxist-Leninists uphold the right of all nations to self-determination, up to and including the right to secession. This was a cornerstone of Lenin's position and was put into practice by the Soviet state, which granted formal equality and self-determination to the many nations within its borders.
The right to self-determination does not mean that Marxist-Leninists always advocate for secession. It means that the question must be decided freely by the people of each nation, without coercion by the oppressor nation. In each concrete case, communists assess whether secession or unity best serves the interests of the working class and the revolutionary movement.
Lenin fought on two fronts simultaneously: against the great-power chauvinism of the oppressor nations (which denied the right to self-determination) and against bourgeois nationalism in the oppressed nations (which sought to subordinate the class struggle to national interests). Both deviations serve the bourgeoisie.
In the epoch of imperialism, the national question takes on a new character. The imperialist powers — principally Britain, France, and the United States — have carved up the world between them, subjecting entire continents to colonial and neo-colonial domination. National liberation movements in the colonised world are objectively anti-imperialist and progressive, regardless of their internal class composition.
The Communist International under Lenin recognised that the national liberation movements of the colonised peoples are allies of the proletarian revolution in the imperialist countries. The struggle of the Indian people against British rule, the Vietnamese people against French and American imperialism, the African peoples against colonial domination — all of these were blows struck against the global imperialist system.
Today, national liberation struggles continue in Palestine, in the neo-colonial territories of Africa, and wherever imperialist domination persists. Communists in the imperialist countries have a special duty to support these struggles and to fight against their own ruling class's imperialist crimes.
The Soviet Union represented the most ambitious attempt in history to solve the national question on a socialist basis. From over 100 distinct nationalities, the USSR built a multinational state based on the formal equality of all nations and the promotion of national cultures, languages, and institutions.
Under Stalin's nationalities policy, previously illiterate peoples received written languages for the first time. National republics were established with their own governments, educational systems, and cultural institutions. Affirmative action policies (korenizatsiya — "nativisation") promoted members of national minorities to positions of leadership.
This was not without contradictions. The tension between central planning and national autonomy, the deportations of certain nationalities during the war, and the later Russification policies under Khrushchev and Brezhnev all represented real problems. But the fundamental achievement — the creation of a multinational workers' state based on equality rather than oppression — stands as a model for the future.
Britain and France are themselves multinational states built on national oppression. The British state was constructed through the conquest and subjugation of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. The French state was built through the suppression of Breton, Occitan, Basque, Corsican, and Alsatian cultures and languages.
In both countries, the national question is further complicated by the presence of large communities from former colonies — the result of centuries of imperial plunder followed by the deliberate importation of cheap labour. These communities face systematic discrimination and are used by the bourgeoisie to divide the working class through racism and xenophobia.
Communists must fight against all forms of national oppression and racism while maintaining the unity of the working class. This means supporting the right to self-determination of oppressed nations within the British and French states, fighting against racism and discrimination, and opposing all attempts by the bourgeoisie to divide workers along national or racial lines.
While supporting the right to self-determination and national liberation, Marxist-Leninists firmly oppose bourgeois nationalism in all its forms. Nationalism that serves the bourgeoisie — whether in the form of great-power chauvinism, petty-bourgeois separatism, or identity politics — is a weapon against the working class.
The proletariat has no fatherland under capitalism. The working class of all nations shares a common interest in the overthrow of the capitalist system. Proletarian internationalism — the unity of the world working class against the world bourgeoisie — is the guiding principle of the communist movement.
This does not mean ignoring national differences or pretending that national oppression does not exist. It means subordinating the national question to the class question: fighting for national liberation as part of the struggle for socialism, not as an end in itself.
"The proletariat cannot but fight against the forcible retention of the oppressed nations within the boundaries of a given state... The proletariat must demand the right of political secession for the colonies and for the nations that 'its own' nation oppresses."
— V.I. Lenin, The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1916)Against imperialism, against national oppression, for proletarian internationalism.