Marxism and the national question

Table of Contents

Part One: The national question in history

The French revolution
The national question after 1848
Italian unification

Part two: Marx and Engels and the national question

The Polish question
The Franco-Prussian war
Marx on Ireland
The Second International
'National-cultural autonomy'

Part Three: Lenin on the national question

What is a nation?
A class question
Class independence
Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg
Unity of workers' organisations
The Jewish question
Self-determination
Lenin and 'practicality'

Part Four: The national question after October

Lenin and Great Russian nationalism
'Socialism in one country'
Trotsky and the Ukrainian question
The national question and Stalinism

Part Five: The nation state today

Falling commodity prices and debt
The colonial revolution today
The Palestinian Question
Self-determination as a reactionary slogan
A malicious misrepresentation of Marxism
Marxists and the Irish question
Euskadi
The national question and the Balkans
Trotsky on the Balkans
For a Socialist Federation of the Balkans!
For an internationalist policy!

Appendix: Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and the Colonial Questions
(Second Congress of the Third (Communist) International)

Note: these is a long document which you can also download (130k) (Word 6 zipped file)

Further recommended reading on the National Question:

• Crisis in the Balkans: a Socialist Analysis, a full collection of articles and documents providing a socialist internationalist alternative to the problems of the Balkans
• Connolly and the Easter Uprisingby Ted Grant, 1966
• Labour and Ireland four part analysis by Cain O'Mahoney, 1997
• East Timor: Can we trust the United Nations? Ted Grant and Jean Duval 20th September, 1999
• Middle East in Turmoil, Rob Sewell, September 1999
• The arrest of Ocalan and the plight of the Kurdish people, Ted Grant and Fernando D'Alessandro February 1999
• Nationalism or Socialism? A Look at the Problems in Québec, Rob Lyon February 1999