The Republican Communist Network (RCN<\/acronym>) has mainly applied an \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 approach as a way to unite communists, socialists and revolutionary democrats throughout these islands around an immediate programme (1). This stems from our political opposition to the UK state, which acts as a junior partner to US imperialism and as a \u2018licensed\u2019 enforcer for corporate capitalist interests in the North East Atlantic, aided and abetted by its own junior partner, the \u201826 Counties\u2019 Irish state. (Of course, there are many other reasons why we oppose this and other capitalist states) In this context, we have argued for an \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 approach to counter two other approaches offered by the Left – the Left unionism of the British Left, and the Left nationalism mainly found in Scotland, Wales and Ireland.<\/p>\n The purpose of this contribution, however, is to show that \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 flows from a global and specifically communist understanding of the best way to advance the struggle for \u2018another possible world\u2019 – a viable alternative to capitalism. We could call this \u2018world communism\u2019 or \u2018the global commune\u2019 – a less politically loaded term, given that the majority of people in the world equate communism with bureaucratic one-party states, such as the old USSR<\/acronym> and China.<\/p>\n In making the communist case for \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 on a global scale, we have to recognise that there are another two major approaches to the National Question found on the Left. Some look to a future world with a classless confederation of nations, regions or communities; whilst others look to a future classless, single, planned global order but, in the meantime, largely accept the territorial frameworks already bequeathed by capitalism (with exceptions permitted, by some, for countries where there is significant political repression).<\/p>\n What is interesting, though, is that the division between these two approaches is not one between old-style Social Democrats\/Communists on one side and Anarchists on the other. Social Democrats\/Communists and Anarchists are themselves divided in giving their support to these approaches, each having advocates in both camps.<\/p>\n In one camp can be found most official, and some dissident Communists, along with some Anarchists. They share an opposition to a future single planned world system. Instead, they advocate a world of nation-states, or smaller non-state communities, hopefully living in harmony.\u00a0 We could call their approach confederalist.<\/p>\n Supporters of the world of nation-states approach amongst the old official Communists, openly declared their support for \u2018socialism in one country\u2019. Their ultimate vision was still global, looking forward eventually to a worldwide confederation of independent socialist nation-states.\u00a0 Certain federations, providing a greater degree of political and economic unity, might be supported, but the historical experience of the federal USSR<\/acronym> and Yugoslavia, shows that these came to be dominated by their largest constituent republic – Russia and Serbia respectively.\u00a0 However, some old official Communists might have still entertained the idea of an eventual world federation without dominant nation-states, where certain functions were performed by a worldwide confederal state.<\/p>\n Some other socialists have adopted a nuanced version of this solution by advocating various regional socialist federations, e.g. the Trotskyist CWI<\/acronym>. Despite coming from a tradition opposed to the old official Communism (which they style Stalinism), their future ideal world system remains somewhat nebulous, perhaps federal, perhaps after a long period, eventually unitary.<\/p>\n Hostility to a future integrated planned world order can also be found amongst some Anarchists. Works such as Schumacher\u2019s book, Small is Beautiful,<\/em> have influenced their thinking. These Anarchists emphasise the need for small-scale local communities, with an economy based on local renewable resources, but with some economic exchange between otherwise autonomous communities. Unlike, the official and dissident communists though, there would be no intermediate democratic or socialist states, just the slow expansion of non-state communities or communes. There are no doubt also differences amongst such Anarchists adhering to such an approach, especially over the organisational methods to be used to bring about greater territorial cooperation. But whether local, regional, national or worldwide organisation is envisaged, Anarchists tend to see confederal relations as the best way to bring about greater cooperation.<\/p>\n Another camp holds up its own ideal for a future world order, which would be united territorially and have global planning.\u00a0 This approach could be termed cosmopolitan. It can claim the support of the early Marx and Engels, especially in the lead-up to the 1847-9 International Revolutionary Wave. Michael Lowy has shown this in his chapter Cosmopolites<\/cite> in Fatherland or Mother Earth.<\/cite> It was only later, as will be shown, that Marx and Engels moved to a more \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 approach, and a possible multi-linear path towards the formation of a new world order.<\/p>\n The Communist Manifesto<\/cite>, written in 1848, shows Marx and Engels then believed that as capital brought more and more of the world under its sway, it eliminated the outdated classes associated with the past – the aristocracy, peasants and artisans – leaving only capital and labour, or the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, in contention.<\/p>\n Furthermore, the Communist Manifesto<\/cite> also argued that capitalism was already doing away with the material basis for separate nations. “National differences and antagonisms are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity of the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto” (2). \u201cThe nationality of the worker is neither French, nor English, nor German, it is labour, free {wage} slavery, self-huckstering {selling oneself}.\u00a0 His government is neither French, nor English, nor German, it is capital.\u00a0 His native air is neither French, nor German, nor English, it is factory air\u201d (3).<\/p>\n Marx and Engels did acknowledge the existence of \u2018historic nations\u2019, as opposed to what they termed \u2018unhistoric peoples\u2019. However, they thought that these too would soon give way in the new cosmopolitan world order being prepared by the capitalist advances the \u2018historic nations\u2019 were busy promoting. \u201cAfter industry in England, politics in France, philosophy in Germany have been developed, they have been developed for the world, and their world-historic significance, as also that of these nations, has thereby come to an end\u201d (4). Furthermore, whatever other differences the Anarchist, Proudhon had with Marx and Engels, they still shared a cosmopolitan approach to revolution.<\/p>\n Today, a cosmopolitan approach, partly based on Marx and Engels\u2019 earlier writings, is to be found amongst Luxemburgists, some dissident Trotskyists, the SPGB<\/acronym>, and the Autonomists – most obviously Negri and Hardt in their book, Empire<\/cite>. Cosmopolitan thinking, drawing on a number of sources, can also be found amongst some Anarchists. David Broder\u2019s review, The Earth is not flat <\/em>(5), of the Anarchist Federation\u2019s Against Nationalism,<\/em> highlights such thinking in this regard.<\/p>\n Whatever differences still remain (and this isn\u2019t to underestimate their importance), these Marxists and Anarchists share a belief that capitalism has already largely created a world of two classes, in which other classes either have no future, or have, at best, limited walk-on parts in the struggle for a better world.<\/p>\n Of course, most cosmopolitans do acknowledge the existence of continued divisions, including amongst the working class – e.g. sexual, ethno-religious and national. However, they claim these come about largely through false consciousness, as a result of ideologies actively promoted on behalf of the capitalist class, e.g. by the state machine, male chauvinists and feminists, competing nationalists and religious leaders, or by socialists who fail to adhere to their cosmopolitan approach.<\/p>\n Cosmopolitans tend to believe that such false consciousness and ideologies can be effectively countered by means of persistent propaganda and a shared involvement of workers in economic struggles. This will bring about a true class consciousness, which sees all struggles of the exploited and oppressed in terms of capital versus labour.\u00a0 Many such cosmopolitans will acknowledge that this ideological battle is a labour of Sisyphus, but say that communists and workers should not be deflected into struggles over \u2018secondary\u2019 oppressions, since the Revolution will bring these to an end.<\/p>\n It is worth going deeper into the roots of these approaches and see how another approach, \u2018internationalism from below\u2019, has attempted to break free from the limitations of those who advocate confederalism (which either ends up tailing nationalism, or contents itself with purely localist initiatives) and those who advocate cosmopolitanism (which downplays, or even opposes, current democratic struggles against oppression and tends to fall back on propagandism, when economic struggles fail to lead to the hoped for class consciousness).<\/p>\n If we look to those broadly upholding a more con\/federalist approach, we can see their antecedents in the American revolutionary, Benjamin Franklin, who believed that the original states, constituting the USA<\/acronym>, were just the first in a new federal republican world order, which would be brought about by Enlightened leaders. Revolutionary democratic Jacobins believed that their new French republic was the first building block in a new European federation of republican nation-states. The Italian revolutionary democrat, Mazzini, and his supporters in Young Europe, envisaged something similar, only with the \u2018historic\u2019 European nation-states taking joint responsibility for building a new worldwide republican federation.<\/p>\n Mazzini also argued that his proposed republican federation would be based on \u201cprinciples of national freedom and progress\u2026 in favour of the right of every people to self-government and the maintenance of their own nationality\u201d (6).\u00a0 Mazzini, though, supported the idea of \u2018historical nations\u2019 or, as he called them \u2018nations with a mission\u2019, so there was still scope for argument as to who constituted a \u2018people\u2019 or nation. The Anarchist, Bakunin, however, clearly declared that, \u201cI demand only one thing: that to each people, to each large or small tribe or race should be accorded the right to act according to its wishes\u201d (7).<\/p>\n In contrast, an early example of an \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 approach can be seen amongst the Fraternal Democrats, who were part of the Chartist Left. In 1847, the English Chartist, Julian Harney, protested against joint British, French and Spanish suppression of a revolt in Portugal.\u00a0 \u201cA blow against freedom on the Tagus is a blow against all friends of freedom on the Thames\u201d (8).\u00a0 Marx, a cosmopolitan at that time, would likely have seen the Portuguese people as historically redundant and destined to be absorbed into a larger \u2018historic\u2019 Spanish\/Iberian nation.\u00a0 It was Harney and the London-based Society of Fraternal Democrats who endeavoured to place Mazzini\u2019s \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 on a proletarian footing, \u201cgiving life to a new Young Europe\u201d (9).<\/p>\n It took Marx and Engels a considerable time before they arrived at an \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 approach. After the defeat of the 1847-9 International Revolutionary Wave, Marx and Engels had to back-pedal from their previous belief in the immediate prospect of a cosmopolitan \u2018revolution in permanence\u2019. \u2018Historic nations\u2019 were now given a more extended lifetime to perform their \u2018historic duty\u2019 of preparing the capitalist grounding for a future communist world order.<\/p>\n In the meantime, tactical support could also be given to those stateless \u2018historical nations\u2019 – Poland and Hungary – in the front line of the battle against that lynchpin of Reaction – Tsarist Russia and its Habsburg Austrian ally. Elsewhere, they argued that, whether in Ireland, Mexico, Algeria, India, China and Turkestan, the \u2018historic nations\u2019 of \u2018England\/Britain\u2019, the USA<\/acronym>, France, and even Russia when facing East, still had their \u2018progressive\u2019 role to perform in eliminating antiquated pre-capitalist societies, including bringing about the end of \u2018historyless peoples\u2019.<\/p>\n Events in India (the Indian Mutiny of 1857) and China (The Second Opium War of 1856-60) led to the first modifications in Marx and Engels\u2019 earlier perspectives. They now switched their support to those fighting for political independence. New struggles in Poland and Ireland, reflected in the debates of the First International, pushed Marx and Engels towards a more definite \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 approach.<\/p>\n When the debate over Poland came up in the First International, Proudhon-influenced Anarchists accused Engels of, in effect, abandoning their previously shared cosmopolitan principles, when he argued for solidarity with the Polish struggle. He was criticised for giving his support to the \u2018nationalities principle\u2019. He replied in the following manner. \u201cPoland, like most other European countries, is inhabited by people of different nationalities\u201d (10).\u00a0 He identified four nationalities within the Polish nation – the Poles, Lithuanians, White Russians and Ukrainians. The Poles (meaning all the inhabitants of Poland) were a multi-ethnic nation not a nationality.<\/p>\n Thus Engels made a distinction between nations, which were territorial and tended to incorporate several peoples or nationalities; and nationalities, which were, in effect, ethnic (sometimes ethno-religious) groups. Ethnic groups could often be found widely dispersed and living mixed amongst others, particularly in cities. Marx and Engels would have been unhappy to concede an exclusive territorial state to \u201ceach small tribe or race\u201d, as envisaged by Bakunin.\u00a0 Their focus was upon nations.<\/p>\n This distinction between nations and nationalities was a clear step forward. Furthermore, Marx and Engels no longer limited their reason for supporting the Polish national democratic struggle to tactical considerations in relation to Tsarist Russia. This is why they didn\u2019t oppose the Mazzini\/Harney-type principle adopted by the First International. It declared for \u2018the right of every people to dispose of itself\u2019 (11) (an earlier version of the 1896 Second International congress policy of support for \u2018the right of national self-determination\u2019). As in Mazzini\u2019s earlier case, there was still ambiguity and argument over who constituted a \u2018people\u2019 – although, clearly for Marx and Engels, it was nations not nationalities, which enjoyed this territorial right.<\/p>\n Indeed, Marx soon found himself up against Proudhon-influenced Anarchists in the First International. When \u201cthe question of \u2018nationality\u2019 in general and the attitude we should take towards it\u201d, was brought up, \u201c… the representatives of Young France (non-workers) came out with the argument that all nationalities and even nations were \u2018antiquated prejudices\u2019…\u00a0 The English laughed very much when I began my speech by saying that our friend Lafargue…\u00a0 who had done away with nationalities, had spoken \u2018French\u2019 to us, i.e. a language which nine-tenths of the audience did not understand.\u00a0 I also suggested that by the negation of nationalities he appeared, quite unconsciously, to understand their absorption into the model French nation\u201d (12).<\/p>\n As Marx and Engels moved away from the cosmopolitan camp, which they originally shared with Proudhon, they did not move over into the confederalist communist camp. Certainly, Marx and Engels did envisage a developing world of multi-nationality nation-states, not nationality or ethnic states. They also sometimes advocated confederal or federal state arrangements. However, these state forms were only meant to be a transitional democratic phase in the development from capitalism to the lower phase of communism. In the upper phase of communism, however, such transitional political forms of state would be transcended as existing nation-states, confederations and federations themselves disappeared as part of \u2018the withering way of the state\u2019.<\/p>\n A useful parallel for understanding Marx and Engels\u2019 approach to the ending of nation-states and nationalism can be seen in their attitude to religions. They supported secular states. Within these, adherents of particular religions would enjoy the right to practice their religion, but no privileges were to be conceded to any religion by the state.<\/p>\n As a consequence of arguing for secularism, Marx and Engels were opposed to two other methods of dealing with religion. They opposed campaigns for atheist states on one hand, and states with established or recognised religions on the other (whatever degree of religious \u2018toleration\u2019 these states might also permit).<\/p>\n Official atheist states, such as the former USSR<\/acronym>, Albania and China, have led to a growth of religious support amongst the oppressed and alienated, which has consequently acted as a focus for political opposition. Furthermore, such states have sometimes adopted their own personality cults as a substitute for religious beliefs, e.g. around Stalin, Hoxha or Mao.<\/p>\n Marx and Engels opposed the formation of nationality (ethnic) states, the equivalent of earlier pre-capitalist states with established religions (although some capitalist states, including the UK in England still maintain a Church establishment). The reactionary racist nature of nationality-states can be seen in the old pre-1972 \u2018Six Counties\u2019, in former apartheid South Africa, and in current apartheid Israel, which have favoured Protestant Ulster-British, Whites and Jews respectively.<\/p>\n However many today, including some on the Left, look little further in their minimum programmes or policies than offering support for the nation-state equivalent of religiously \u2018tolerant\u2019 states – only with \u2018toleration\u2019 extended to a number of ethnic groups instead. This can be found in constitutionally recognised and ethnically shared administrations, e.g. the post-Good Friday Agreement \u2018Six Counties\u2019. Another variation of this \u2018tolerant\u2019 approach can be found in state promoted multi-ethnic measures, e.g. those developed in the UK after the Brixton Riots of 1981. These tend to lead to the creation of privileged and unaccountable, state-recognised \u2018representatives\u2019 of ethno-religious \u2018communities\u2019.\u00a0 Such approaches leave the state in position of broker, able to play one community off against the other, and when necessary, divide the working class and oppressed.<\/p>\n In contrast, communists should recognise the right of any members of a particular ethnic group to voluntarily pursue their own chosen cultural activities, whilst seeking to maximise the opportunities for wider mixing with others at work, school, college or in the community. We should oppose policies that lead to physical separation of ethnic groups, and instead support integration, voluntary assimilation and mixed relationships within nations. Such an approach could be called \u2018multi-culturalism from below\u2019.<\/p>\n \u2018Internationalism from below\u2019 is the wider political manifestation of such an approach, helping to bring about greater unity between nations, without any one group having to subordinate itself to another – particularly to those from culturally dominant ethnic groups.<\/p>\n It was the growing struggle in Ireland, which pushed Marx and Engels further towards \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 as an organisational principle in the First International.\u00a0 Here Engels came up against, not Proudhonist Anarchists, but an early trade unionist adherent of a \u2018British road to socialism\u2019 – John Hales. When Engels argued for Irish independence and a distinct Irish section, Hales contended, \u201cthat the International had nothing to do with liberating Ireland\u201d (13). He tried to bring the Irish sections of the International under the control of the London\/British Federal Council.\u00a0 In reply Engels stated that: –<\/p>\n \u201cThe position of Ireland with regard to England was not that of an equal, but that of Poland with regard to Russia… What would be said if the Council called upon Polish sections to acknowledge the supremacy of a Council sitting in Petersburg, or upon Prussian Polish, North Schleswig {Danish} and Alsatian sections to submit to a Federal Council in Berlin… that was not Internationalism, but simply preaching to them submission to the yoke… and attempting to justify and perpetuate the dominion of the conqueror under the cloak of Internationalism.\u00a0 It was sanctioning the belief, only too common amongst English {British} working men, that they were superior beings compared to the Irish, and as much an aristocracy as the mean whites of the Slave States considered themselves to be with regard to the Negroes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn a case like the Irish, true Internationalism must necessarily be based upon a distinctly national organization: the Irish, as well as other oppressed nationalities, could enter the Association {the IWMA<\/acronym>} only as equals with members of the conquering nation, and under protest at the conquest” (14).<\/p>\n There was a further reason for Marx and Engels wanting to maintain independent Irish organisations.\u00a0 \u201cThey were more advanced, being placed in more favourable circumstances, and the movement in Ireland could be propagated and organised only though their instrumentality\u201d (15).<\/p>\n Hales countered that,\u00a0 \u201cThe formation of Irish branches in England could only keep alive that national antagonism which had unfortunately so long existed between the people of the two countries\u201d (16).\u00a0 He was arguing from a position, which maintained that, as far as advanced socialists were concerned, workers of all nationalities had already achieved equality in their British organisations.\u00a0 Hales thought that English\/British socialism was the model that the Irish should aspire to. Such an attitude is today deeply engrained amongst the British Left.<\/p>\n Engels, in contrast, appreciated the different position of Irish migrant workers and their descendants, who formed a significant part of the unskilled working class in Britain. Engels\u2019 political stance was linked to attempts to maintain the unity of the politically advanced sections of the working class, and win the support of the unskilled, particularly Irish migrant workers.<\/p>\n In other words, where minority nationalities suffered from oppression within a dominant nation, they too had the right to form their own independent organisations there.\u00a0 This has continuing relevance today, particularly for recent migrants, who still remain subject to various forms of discrimination within the imperialist countries. One current example stands out in relation to activities of the commune<\/em> – the Latin American Workers\u2019 Association.<\/p>\n Marx and Engels\u2019 \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 organisational principles, of course, fly in the face of later Second International, Luxemburgist and Bolshevik orthodoxy – the \u2018one-state\/one-party\u2019 principle.\u00a0 Kautsky (the Second International\u2019s \u2018Pope of Marxism\u2019), Luxemburg and Lenin were assiduous collectors of Marx and Engels\u2019 quotes since they wished above all else to appear ultra-orthodox in debates with other Marxists.\u00a0 Yet, they studiously ignored Marx and Engels\u2019 writings and practice on this matter.<\/p>\n Marx and Engels legacy of \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 as an organisational principle was to be lost in both the Second and Third Internationals.\u00a0 Instead these organisations\u2019 support for the principle of \u2018one-state\/one-party\u2019 led to real political degeneracy.\u00a0 In the hands of many Second Internationalists it became a thinly disguised cover for dominant nationality chauvinism and imperialism.\u00a0 Later, Stalinists, Maoists and some Trotskyists even ended up duplicating the fascist principle – \u2018one state, one party, one leader\u2019!<\/p>\n Supporters of the \u2018one-state\/one-party\u2019 principle have pointed to the social patriotism, which undoubtedly did emerge whenever some parties, drawing their support from workers amongst the oppressed nationalities (e.g. the Polish Socialist Party), departed from this organisational principle. What supporters of the \u2018one-state\/one-party\u2019 approach fail to appreciate is that much of the openly displayed social patriotism found in some of the parties rebelling against this principle was a response to the thinly disguised social chauvinism (and sometimes social imperialism) found in dominant nationality parties, e.g., the SPD<\/acronym>, RSDLP<\/acronym> and SDF<\/acronym>.<\/p>\n Thus the social chauvinism encapsulated in \u2018one-state\/one-party\u2019 organisations and the social patriotism involved in separatist parties are not really opposites, but mutually reinforcing dead-end forms of organisation. What is needed is an International, or, until that is achieved, more limited federations based on the principle of \u2018internationalism from below\u2019.<\/p>\n Supporters of \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 are just as opposed to separatism, and as just as keen to unite with others. However, we realise that the \u2018one-state\/one-party\u2019 principle goes hand in hand with accepting subordination to social chauvinism.\u00a0 Indeed, as the majority of the British unionist Left has shown – from the Labour Party, old (and new) CPGB<\/acronym>, the SWP<\/acronym>, CWI<\/acronym> to the AWL<\/acronym> – their hard-wired sectarianism seem to mimic the anti-democratic, bureaucratic practices of the UK state. Therefore, coming together on the basis of \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 is a much better way of bringing about meaningful unity.<\/p>\n The majority in both the Second and Third Internationals claimed that the \u2018one-state\/one-party\u2019 principle was the best way to confront existing states by uniting the members of the various nations and nationalities forming the working class within a particular state.<\/p>\n Those who adopted this principle in the Second International usually ended up as apologists for the actions of the leaders of the dominant nationality in, or as subservient agents of, the states they sought to reform – the collapse of the social imperialist Social Democratic leadership of the Second International, in the face of the First World War, being the most obvious example.<\/p>\n However, some who still fought strenuously against the Second International\u2019s capitulation to imperialism, such as Luxemburg, also helped to undermine \u2018internationalism from below\u2019, through their relentless pursuit of the \u2018one-state\/one-party\u2019 principle. Luxemburg allied herself with the Right in the SPD<\/acronym> to break the influence of the party\u2019s \u2018autonomous\u2019 Polish section, thus aiding a thinly disguised German chauvinism. Lenin and the Bolsheviks also doggedly pursued a \u2018one-state\/one-party\u2019 principle, claiming it created the centralised political instrument needed for the overthrow of existing states.<\/p>\n In relation to the National Question, there was a political difference between Luxemburg and Lenin. Luxemburg, particularly after 1905-6 Revolution, vehemently opposed the Second International\u2019s policy of \u2018the right of nations to self-determination\u2019, whilst Lenin insisted that Social Democrats (and later official Communists) should give this policy their support in party programmes. Before the 1905-6 Revolution, Lenin held to a more \u2018Luxemburgist\u2019 approach over this issue.<\/p>\n However, the apparent difference between Luxemburg and Lenin, after 1905, hides an underlying shared assumption. Both agreed with Kautsky that capitalism was continually undermining the basis for the continued relevance of the National Question.\u00a0 The more \u2018advanced\u2019 the capitalism, the less relevant the issue of national self-determination. They fell back on the sort of arguments Marx had utilised in his cosmopolitan phase, especially in The<\/em> Communist Manifesto<\/em>.<\/p>\n Thus, Lenin initially argued that the National Question no longer had any relevance in the advanced capitalist West, but only in Central and Eastern Europe (particularly Tsarist Russia and Hapsburg Austria-Hungary), and the Balkans and Asia, where feudal and other despotic relics had not yet been eliminated. Luxemburg disagreed with Lenin over the significance of the National Question in Central and Eastern Europe, but agreed with him about its irrelevance in the West and its importance in the Balkans and Asia.\u00a0 She supported the struggles of the Greeks (in Crete) and the Armenians against the Ottoman Empire.\u00a0 It was only in the First World War, that Bukharin and others in the Radical Left arrived at a neo-Luxemburgist position, which opposed the struggle for national self-determination everywhere.<\/p>\n However, like Luxemburg, Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not want to see the territorial break-up of existing states, even in Central and Eastern Europe.\u00a0 They thought that that any wish by workers (and peasants) to exercise a \u2018right of national self-determination\u2019 would no longer be necessary when outdated, anti-democratic dynastic rule was overthrown. So, in the meantime, workers (and others) should concentrate their efforts on fighting for all-state wide revolution.\u00a0 In practice this led to an abstentionist attitude towards participation in the actual national democratic struggles that did emerge.<\/p>\n This could clearly be seen in Lenin\u2019s pre-First World War attitude to the exercise of national self-determination in Poland, where there was a longstanding national movement. Lenin agreed with Luxemburg that Social Democrats in Poland should oppose such a course, whilst disagreeing with her opposition to the RSDLP<\/acronym> in Russia adopting the right of Poland to national self-determination. Nevertheless, Lenin still hoped that such a right would never be exercised. If there were to be any future referendum, Poles should vote \u2018No\u2019 and Russians should vote \u2018Yes\u2019. Such \u2018zero-sum internationalism\u2019 provided no basis for socialists\/communists taking the lead in the actual national democratic struggles, which developed against the Tsarist and Hapsburg Empires. The effect was to leave the leadership of national democratic struggles to others, either bourgeois nationalists or social patriots, with dire consequences.<\/p>\n The majority of the Polish Left\u2019s failure to champion the exercise of national self-determination left the issue in the hands of the social patriot, Pilsudski and the bourgeois nationalist, Damowski. Neither of these characters wanted to break external imperial control by Russia, Austria or Prussia-Germany through the mass action of workers and peasants. Instead they mainly looked for alternative imperial backers for Poland\u2019s independence. Soon after state independence was achieved, with imperial backing, particularly from France, the infant Polish Communists mounted a challenge to the new state. However, having played little part in the previous national democratic struggle against imperial rule, they were soon isolated, repressed and marginalised.<\/p>\n In contrast, the Finnish Social Democrats made a more serious attempt to exercise Finnish self-determination. They became involved in a revolutionary war in late 1917 to early 1918. They faced the utterly brutal White Counter-revolution of the Finnish Right and the invading German forces. This was much worse than anything experienced by the Polish Left at the time.\u00a0 Nevertheless, by the early 1920\u2019s the Finnish Left was able to make a stronger recovery than the Polish Left. This was largely because of their recognised role in attempting to break away from the Russian imperialist state.<\/p>\n Lenin and the Bolsheviks failed to adopt an \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 approach, which actively championed the break-up of the Russian imperialist state.\u00a0 He preferred to hide behind a promise to uphold the right of self-determination, but only to be exercised after a successfully completed workers\u2019 and peasant revolution. This led to lost opportunities in Finland in July 1917, and in Ukraine in December 1917.\u00a0 Perhaps, not surprisingly, no referenda on national self-determination were ever held, once the Bolsheviks had consolidated their control.<\/p>\n When the USSR<\/acronym> was first constituted in 1922, there was no national designation in the state\u2019s name, since the new government claimed that its initial few constituent soviet republics were merely the first building blocks in a future worldwide soviet federation. They also claimed that this new federation would eventually give way to a united, planned, world communist order, without nation-states, just as Marx and Engels had originally envisaged.<\/p>\n However, Marx and Engels, as adherents of an \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 approach, would not have been surprised to see the unfolding of a very different outcome. The \u2018one-state\/one party\u2019 soon gave way to the one-party State. The glue for this new USSR<\/acronym> was provided, not by the soviets (or communes) under workers\u2019 control. They had already been crushed in 1921. Nor was the infant USSR<\/acronym> under the direction of the Third International.<\/p>\n Instead, the \u2018one-state\/one-party\u2019 CPSU<\/acronym>, which controlled the USSR<\/acronym>, increasingly acted as a threadbare cover for the specifically Russian nationalism, which lay not far beneath an official superficial \u2018internationalism\u2019.\u00a0 The Chinese Communist Party under Mao, arguing from the same organisational principle, developed an even stronger nationalist character. Thus, it can be seen that parties based on the \u2018one-state\/one-party\u2019 principle readily became transmission belts for the dominant nationality chauvinism and imperialism.<\/p>\n So, what would an \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 approach look like in today\u2019s conditions? The case for a single unified world system – a global commune – is much stronger today than in the days of Marx and Engels, or even of Luxemburg and Lenin. However, this need doesn\u2019t stem from any belief that capitalism has already performed a necessary progressive service for humankind in developing the productive forces to their present level. There never was a fore-ordained, progressive, capitalist course of necessary world development. Peasants, artisans, workers have always fought for \u2018other possible worlds\u2019 and the development of capitalism was contested at every stage, by people seeking other outcomes – not only by those looking back to some \u2018lost golden era\u2019, but also by those who struggled for a universal republic or for social republics.<\/p>\n Marx and Engels, themselves, departed from their earlier view of a necessary unilinear path of capitalist progress, when they first made a distinction between two paths of capitalist transition in Volume 3 of Capital<\/cite> \u201cThe transition from the feudal mode of production is twofold.\u00a0 The producer becomes the merchant and capitalist, in contrast to the natural agricultural economy and the guild bound handicrafts of the medieval urban industries.\u00a0 This is the really revolutionizing path.\u00a0 Or else, the merchant establishes direct sway over production.\u00a0 However much this serves historically as a stepping stone… it can not by itself contribute to the overthrow of the old mode of production, but rather tends to preserve and retain it as its precondition\u201d (17).<\/p>\n This new understanding paved the way for Marx and Engels\u2019 later dropping of their earlier support for \u2018free trade\u2019. They had originally argued in support of \u2018free trade\u2019 because it helped to create a worldwide market, and promote the capitalist socio-economic relations they saw as the necessary grounding for a future communist society. However, they later appreciated that British-promoted \u2018free trade\u2019 tended to reduce all other states to primary producing economic dependencies of \u2018the workshop of the world\u2019 (in an analogous fashion to the effect of US promoted \u2018free markets\u2019 today).\u00a0 This insight also allowed them to see the regressive effects of externally imposed capitalism, i.e. imperialism, particularly in Ireland and India.<\/p>\n Indeed, they went further, and thought that it might be possible for some countries, which hadn\u2019t yet fully committed themselves to the capitalist path, e.g. Russia (until 1894 in Engels\u2019 case), and then the wider East, to be able to build upon the communal forms of agricultural production still existing, in cooperation with a socialist West.\u00a0 In 1892, Engels even turned to Germany, now well and truly committed to the industrial capitalist path. \u00a0He called for \u201creviving the mark, not in its old outdated form, but in a rejuvenated form; by rejuvenating communal land ownership under which the latter would not only provide the small-peasant commune with all the prerogatives of big farming and the use of agricultural machinery, but it would also give them the means to organise, along with agriculture, major industries using steam and water power, and to organise them without capitalists by the community itself\u201d (18).<\/p>\n Today, we have witnessed growing resistance to capitalist imposed modernisation, particularly amongst the indigenous Native Americans. It was the revolt of the Zapatistas in 1994, against the new North American Free Trade Agreement, which heralded the beginnings of today\u2019s wider anti-globalisation and anti-capitalist movements. As it becomes even clearer that continued capitalist expansion threatens us with wholesale environmental degradation and the undermining of the very conditions for human survival, communists should see the real significance of such resistance. Also included in our vision, should be the present-day \u2018Maroons\u2019, those drop-outs from wage slavery.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t to argue for a return to some lost pre-capitalist utopia, in the manner of Zerzan and others. We live in a world largely moulded by capitalism, particularly under today\u2019s conditions of corporate imperialism.\u00a0 As well as the already mentioned environmental degradation, we also suffer from intensified exploitation and oppression (with short-term contract work, increasingly meaningless and boring labour punctuated by periods of unemployment and short-time working, declining real wages, and a rapidly diminishing social wage), and from wholesale alienation bringing about escalating mental health problems and anti-social crimes.<\/p>\n Yet, despite the capitalist imposed conditions of current production, (including the relentless and ultimately self-destructive drive for profit) most people in the world would want to continue with and improve upon the existing infrastructure of water supply, housing, power provision, transport connections, the wide range of essential products and cultural activities, bequeathed by capitalism, which all now depend on continued international linkages for their provision. Certainly, in many cases there is scope for major reform of this pattern of development, with huge cutbacks in the arms industry, the provision of free public transport and the downgrading of private transport, the lowering of dependence on fossil fuels, and the ending of the media and advertising industry\u2019s promotion of a \u2018shop till you drop\u2019 philosophy with its monumentally wasteful production of superfluous commodities.<\/p>\n However, workers, peasants and artisans have created all the existing wealth, not already provided by nature.\u00a0 We can either turn our backs on this legacy, and \u2018retreat into the jungles\u2019, or we can finally claim this wealth on behalf of the descendants of all these exploited people. And, just think of all the as yet unutilised opportunities provided by the new information technology. This would appear to be as a \u2018natural\u2019 a technology for a global commune, as steam power was for the national capitalism of the Industrial Revolution.<\/p>\n Such a global society would also have room for those peoples who, quite understandably, have no wish to be brought under corporate capitalism control, such as the Zapatistas.\u00a0 The speed with which such resistance movements have adopted technologies such as the Internet demonstrates that they too would wish to be part of a new world order, only they would wish to enter it on their own terms, not those imposed by others. The same goes for many current \u2018Maroons\u2019 or drop-outs from wage slavery.<\/p>\n An \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 strategy is committed to the creation of a new unified and planned global commune. Dealing with the growing environmental degradation, and possible major catastrophes, demands nothing less. The only \u2018alternative\u2019 to global planning in such circumstances would appear to be a retreat to more local communities or regional federations with an accompanying neo-Malthusian population cull. This might lead to a world of less resource-demanding, smaller scale communities, but the resulting social disorientation would most likely produce \u2018dog-eat-dog\u2019 violent confrontations between the competing communities and mini-states.<\/p>\n By 2050, the world will already have probably reached \u2018Peak Population\u2019, but of course, if we remain subject to the ceaseless expansion of capitalist production for profit, this would still add to cumulative environmental degradation. It could still very likely lead the world to a catastrophic environmental tipping point.<\/p>\n One positive outcome which could lead to reaching \u2018Peak Population\u2019 before then, would be a massive expansion of women\u2019s rights, especially with more effective control over their bodies, and an ending to male supremacism, currently reinforced by misogynistic religious beliefs. Today\u2019s women\u2019s struggles for more effective control over their lives may presently only constitute a partial fightback against the impact of capitalist oppression, but should be wholeheartedly supported by communists seeking support for a new humanised global commune.<\/p>\n An \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 strategy recognises that the exploited and oppressed are mainly brought into struggle by the immediate conditions we confront. Communists fight for increased wages, not because we want to bolster our conditions as wage slaves, but because we want an improvement in our living standards to undermine those in control of our labour who stultify of our full human potential. We fight for an increased social wage, not because we want a bureaucratic welfare state presiding over our lives, but because we need better housing, education, health and transport now, which meets our immediate needs, and which points the way to more extensive communally-controlled social provision in the future.\u00a0 We fight for access to improved artistic and cultural provision, not because we want to become passive consumers of \u2018reality TV\u2019, lose ourselves in the \u2018virtual world\u2019 of the Internet, or follow lads\u2019 (and ladettes\u2019) lifestyles, but because we want active involvement in artistic and cultural creation to help us to overcome existing alienation and boredom, and to allow us to imagine alternative futures, which enhance our social and individual self-determination. We fight for increased democratic rights, not because we want to reinforce parliamentarianism or \u2018representative\u2019 democracy, or to create new oppressive states, but because we want to undermine those capitalist politicians who would set us against each other, and deny us the ability to bring about greater unity from below to more effectively challenge their rule.<\/p>\n We, in the RCN<\/acronym>, fight for the democratic exercise of self-determination in Scotland, not because we think Scotland is \u2018better\u2019 or \u2018lefter\u2019, nor because we want to turn our backs on those in England, Wales and Ireland, but because we see this as an effective way to undermine the British state and its ruling class, the main buttress for US imperialism and corporate capital in the world today. Due to the fault lines in the UK state\u2019s make-up – its bureaucratic unionism and its anti-democratic Crown Powers – the National Question has continued relevance here (as it does in Ireland and Wales).\u00a0 We seek to extend this struggle to and unite with our neighbours through the active promotion of \u2018internationalism from below\u2019.<\/p>\n Abstaining from democratic struggles and leaving the opposition to the nationalist SNP<\/acronym> won\u2019t help our class. Most of the SNP<\/acronym> leadership would settle for Devolution-Max but, whether or not they achieve formal political independence, would still act as local loyal agents for corporate capital in Scotland. They want to woo global capital to Scotland by making the country a low-tax haven.\u00a0 However, ignoring or denying the importance of the National Question, just leaves its \u2018solution\u2019 once more in the hands of bourgeois nationalists and their social patriotic cheerleaders (Left nationalists).<\/p>\n Furthermore, historically there have been specific local democratic and socialist\/communist manifestations in Scotland of the universal human struggle for another possible world\u00a0 – e.g. the radical wing of the Covenanters, the United Scotsmen, the Chartists, the Highland Land League, the Scottish Socialist Federation, and the legacy of John Maclean. We want to develop this further in alliance with those from other countries. They too have their own local manifestations of the universal struggle – the Levellers, the United Irishmen and London Corresponding Society, the Chartists (especially their most advanced contingent in Wales) the Irish Land League, and the infant Socialist movement (which also included Anarchists).\u00a0 \u2018Internationalism from below\u2019 is the best way to achieve this alliance.<\/p>\n There is a common thread, through all the initial and still partial forms of resistance to exploitation and oppression we find today. This is the need to create and support independent organisations of our class. Social Democratic\/Labour and official Communist Parties (as well as their dissident emulators) have long passed over to the side of capital, and those few \u2018last Mohicans\u2019 still fighting within their ranks, want to rebuild something that, with the benefit of bitter experience and hindsight, was always flawed. Many trade unions, wedded to \u2018social partnership\u2019, have become little more than a free personnel management service for the employers. However, the building of independent trade union organisation – within or outside existing unions, or through a combination of the two – still looks possible.\u00a0 The commune<\/em> has become a focus of debates on how we organise in the workplace, and how we can best develop a strategy of worker\u2019s control or management, in the here and now.<\/p>\n Communists have the role of uniting the independent organisations of our class around a clear vision of a future global commune, which can develop out of the conditions and the struggles of today. After recognising the futility of trying to build a world with many still isolated or competing units (confederalism) when our very existence depends on global solutions; and after experiencing the brutal rule of those imposing their\u00a0 \u2018one-state\/one party\u2019 principle (cosmopolitans), it is time to return to the once marginalised, but now increasingly relevant \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 approach.<\/p>\n Allan Armstrong for the Republican Communist Network, 23.5.10<\/strong><\/p>\n The debate continued in ‘the commune’<\/strong><\/p>\n NO NATIONAL SOLUTIONS<\/strong><\/p>\n Clifford Biddulph\u00a0<\/strong>replies to a debate on the national question<\/p>\n In\u00a0the Earth is not Flat<\/a>\u00a0(see issue 14), David Broder argued that the aim of getting rid of capitalism by class struggle is too abstract in the face of some forms of nationalism. For David, nationalism which is a reaction to imperialism cannot be sidestepped or simply opposed by communism.<\/p>\n This seems to be the Leninist point about two kinds of nationalism: those of oppressed, and oppressor, nations. A limited extension of popular democracy or the sovereignty of an oppressed nation can be supported. This, although David does not entirely share the orthodox Leninist position of unconditional support for the self-determination of nations.<\/p>\n But David does go on to say, contrary to the anti-statist platform of The Commune, that in Colombia the state does not represent the long term interests of the bourgeoisie, implying that some form of anti-imperialist nationalist state could be progressive or in some sense represent the proletariat or be a transition stage to communism. In his own words, a government of state capitalist development would undermine imperialism. The implication is that in some circumstances communists can be nationalists. Nationalism, he claims is not tied to the bourgeoisie. This is not surprising since in The Earth is not Flat he tends to reduce class struggle to trade unionism or so called \u2018economism\u2019.<\/p>\n Allan Armstrong of the Republican Communist Network believes that nationalism is too important to be left to the nationalists.\u00a0\u00a0Hence RCN\u2019s support for Scottish independence. Small state nationalism is dressed up in a slogan: internationalism from below.The RCN stands for internationalism, but until that is achieved more limited federations of states based on the break-up of imperialist states or, to use the slogan, \u2018internationalism from below\u2019.<\/p>\n A form of nationalism is presented as the way forward, and true internationalism is paradoxically based on nationalism. Allan\u2019s republicanism is thus a timeless ideal free of class determination, social and historical context. Internationalism from below floats through history, appearing now as Levellers then as Chartists then again as United Irishmen, John MacLean or the resistance to the poll tax.<\/p>\n But it is not the class struggle between capital and labour that is abstract, but the concept of nation. What is a nation? There is no satisfactory definition and concepts of what constitutes a nation have changed throughout recent history. Is a nation a subjective feeling of identification? In which case there could be endless fragmentation with any significant group of people declaring themselves a nation. Is it unity around a capitalist free market area? Is it unity stuck together with language or religion? Yet there have been multi-language and religious states. Is it a shared culture despite class antagonism? It is not ethnic unity, that is just a myth. There are always exceptions to any check list, and no clear objective and consistent answer. Many modern nation states originated in lines drawn on a map: in short, nationalism is a bourgeois ideology.<\/p>\n The national bourgeois state is a machine of oppression directed against workers. As Roman Rosdolsky put it: \u201cthe working class have no nation. We cannot take from them something they have not got.\u201d The modern state is a product of bourgeois development. In a class society there is no homogenous national culture or community. And the nation state has a capitalist tendency to become non national or imperialist. In that sense there is no fundamental difference between nationalisms. Vietnam was oppressed by American imperialism until 1975, but then four years later became the oppressor of Cambodia.<\/p>\n In the words of Marx from his Critique of the Gotha Programme, political rights cannot rise above the economic structure of society. Class interest determines the nature of capitalist society. The idea of a general right to self determination is utopian. Communists cannot support all national demands, as in some circumstances self-determination would be against the interests of the working class. Marx did not apply a general right of self determination but supported some forms of nationalism from a strategic and tactical point of view, for example supporting Polish nationalism as a check to Russian reaction. But as a speaker at a meeting of the First International said: Russia was not the only country or nationalism that needed checking.<\/p>\n Marx had a check list of what he described as viable nations such as Hungary, Italy and Germany, nationalism which would establish a nation state and capitalist development and the growth of the working class. But German unity was not on the basis of revolutionary democracy from below but conservative unity from above imposed by Prussia. Allan refers to Marx and Engels as if they were one person, but there are important differences in their approach to the national question and other issues such as philosophy. Engels followed Hegel in his notion of non-historic peoples. Both friends made errors of judgment. Some supposedly \u2018non-viable\u2019 peoples established nation states. Riazanov, whose knowledge of Marxism Lenin feared, thought Marx\u2019s obsession with Tsarist Russia as the main danger missed the main danger: the developing antagonism between Germany and Britain over colonies which led to the imperialist war. Some of their political perspectives on nationalities seem at odds with what we understand by historical materialism. Engels\u2019 comments on Germany\u2019s civilising mission were used by Social Democrats to justify support for the first imperialist war.<\/p>\n Lenin did not adhere to the general principle of the right of nations to self determination. He accepted the conquest of Georgia and Ukraine following the Russian revolution. The Bolsheviks considered the self determination in these areas was counter revolutionary or against the international interests of the working class. The revolution and social development did not unfold as Lenin expected. The Russian revolution was not a bourgeois democratic revolution as he had long predicted. The slogan for the \u2018right of nations to self-determination\u2019 was based on Karl Kautsky\u2019s schemas, whereby such a right was premised on the political sphere of bourgeois democracy. It was precisely this bourgeois-democratic content Lenin supported.<\/p>\n But the schema was based on the separation of economics and politics. When Rosa Luxemburg said imperialism economically shaped nations, Lenin denounced her views as \u2018economistic\u2019. But how could there be political emancipation without economic emancipation? The independence of many ex-colonial nations has tended to be formal and has prevented rather than facilitated communism. The assumption was that political democracy would provide the widest conditions for the working class to fight the class war. But the western nation state was not replicated in China and elsewhere. Nationalism in Turkey and China in the 1920s did not lead to a form of revolutionary democracy, but to the destruction of the communist workers\u2019 movement.<\/p>\n Lenin was in favour of \u2018temporary\u2019 alliances with bourgeois nationalists in China and elsewhere. This compromise undermined the independence of the workers\u2019 movement. The aim was not directly the overthrow of capitalism. How temporary was \u2018temporary\u2019? The position was full of ambiguities and inconsistent and implied a transitional historical stage. So counter-revolutionaries were described as objective revolutionaries. Why would the sons of Chinese landlords, as officers in the Kuomintang national army, tolerate revolutionary activity by peasants and workers? A temporary truce between workers\u2019 internationalism and nationalism was not possible.<\/p>\n The right of nations to self-determination, which Lenin borrowed from bourgeois nationalism, assumes the world is flat or all nations could be formally equal. According to Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg did not grasp the fact that Asia had yet to have its bourgeois democratic revolution and he strongly denied that nations demanding equal rights would lead to the proliferation of small states. Provided communists did not advocate separation, as the RCN do for Scotland, self-determination would result in very large states and federations. In Lenin\u2019s opinion workers should always stand for the larger state. But has history demonstrated the truth or falseness of Lenin\u2019s view? Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there has been the emergence of numerous small states. There has been no internationalism from below or small state internationalism.<\/p>\n We can ask the question Rosa Luxemburg once asked. Where is the nation in which the people have had the right to determine the form and content of their national political and social existence? It is only when capitalist exploitation is ended that the oppression of one nation by another can be ended. This was the implication of Trotsky\u2019s theory of permanent revolution which attempted to address the uneven nature of capitalist social development. The working class would become the leading class of the nation in the sense of the Communist Manifesto: national in form only, as in 1917 which was a year of international, not national, revolution.<\/p>\n The ideology of nationalism is historically novel and the majority of people once lived without it. Nationalism had an historical beginning and as far as communists are concerned it will have an end. The communist objective is to liberate humanity, not liberate nations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ABSTRACT PROPAGANDA\u00a0<\/strong>OR ACTIVE INVOLVEMENT\u00a0<\/strong>IN ALL THE STRUGGLES OF OUR CLASS<\/strong><\/p>\n Allan Armstrong replies to\u00a0<\/strong>Clifford Biddulph\u2019s\u00a0no nationalist solutions<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Clifford Biddulph\u2019s\u00a0no nationalist solutions<\/em>\u00a0(issue no. 15 of\u00a0the commune<\/em>) consists mainly of a reply to my article,\u00a0The Communist Case for Internationalism from Below<\/em>.\u00a0 This was written for the Second Global Commune event held on May 22nd<\/sup>\u00a0in Edinburgh. I appreciate the time Clifford has taken to contribute to this debate. However, there will probably need to be a number of further articles before readers can fully appreciate the politics underlying our two approaches.<\/p>\n Clifford\u2019s reply only addresses a few of the arguments, which I put forward in this article. Instead, Clifford puts forward his own particular critique of nationalism – the neo-Luxemburgist* variant of the cosmopolitan approach, which I have already examined and found wanting. Of course, it is perfectly valid for Clifford to write an article offering his own view and to outline its particular origins. In doing so, however, he hasn\u2019t dealt with my critique of the two main approaches to nationalism and the struggle for national self-determination found on the Left – (con)federal and cosmopolitan.<\/p>\n I hope that my latest contribution helps to clear up many of the misconceptions which appear to be held by many socialists, anarchists and communists, either living in England and who are relatively unaware of the situation in Scotland, Wales and Ireland; or those who consciously or unconsciously defend a British Left strategy.<\/p>\n There are substantial historical sections in Clifford\u2019s reply, covering the stance of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Luxemburg, which I have already addressed in my earlier article. There are points in Clifford\u2019s contribution with which I agree, and points where I have already argued from a different standpoint. In this particular contribution I don\u2019t want to get bogged down in a historical \u2018who said what, when and why\u2019. If any reader of\u00a0the commune<\/em>\u00a0is interested in this particular debate, I am happy to e-mail them with the initial drafts of my forthcoming books entitled\u00a0Internationalism from Below<\/em>\u00a0– just contact the editors of\u00a0the commune<\/em>. In the meantime, I will examine Clifford\u2019s other substantial points.<\/p>\n How to bring about communism and bring about an end to nation-states and nationalism<\/strong><\/p>\n I will start with a point of complete agreement between Clifford and myself. Clifford concludes by stating that, \u201cThe ideology of nationalism is historically novel and the majority of people once lived without out.\u00a0 Nationalism has a historical beginning and as far as communists are concerned it will have an end.\u201d\u00a0 The first volume of\u00a0Internationalism from Below<\/em>\u00a0makes precisely this case.<\/p>\n However, Clifford then goes on to state that, \u201cThe communist objective is to liberate humanity, not liberate nations.\u201d The problem here, though, is how can we liberate humanity without liberating nations; or to be more precise – transcending nations? There is no prospect of capitalism doing away with nation-states, so communists will inherit a world where most people have had officially assigned nationalities, which have deep material roots. The overwhelming majority of people today think and act in alienated national terms, just as the majority of people in the Middle Ages thought in alienated religious terms.<\/p>\n Communists could conduct a constant propaganda campaign against nations and nationalism prior to a \u2018big bang\u2019 communist revolution, after which nation-states and nations could just be abolished. In other words, communists could follow a similar course to those atheists who believe that a constant propaganda barrage against religions and their adherents, culminating in the formation of an atheist state declaring all religion illegal, is the task we face today.<\/p>\n In contrast, I would maintain that religions and nations have real material roots, which will not be displaced by mere propaganda. Whilst it is certainly necessary to conduct theoretical struggle against religious (and nationalist) ideology, I am with Marx in advocating not an atheist but a secular state, which recognises people\u2019s rights to practice religion, but upholds the principle that, as long as states still exist, these should neither promote nor suppress religion.<\/p>\n Some supporters of\u00a0the<\/em>\u00a0commune<\/em>\u00a0may say – but we are opposed to all state \u2018solutions\u2019. However, would they also argue that we are opposed to struggles for better wages, improved working conditions, or migrant workers rights, because these all represent continued wage slavery \u2018solutions\u2019?<\/p>\n I would argue that we should adopt the equivalent of a secular approach to religion when dealing with nations and nation-states. Communists should conduct theoretical struggle against nationalist ideology and, of course, engage in the more practical struggle against nationalists pushing their own particular \u2018solutions\u2019 in the course of particular economic, social, cultural and political struggles.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, both today and in any revolutionary transition we should also acknowledge each person\u2019s right to whatever national identity or use of language they choose. However, until there is a universally accepted language for mutual communication, there will be a need for a particular official lingua franca (sometimes more than one) to ensure more effective economic, social and political intercourse. Under present-day capitalist conditions there is \u00a0a bias in each nation-state towards the specific features of the majority nation living there. Communists, though, should continually contest the nature of such provision.<\/p>\n In other arenas, communists should be organising to push back specific ethnic national features of existing or would-be \u2018nation\u2019-states. This is why I drew a distinction between \u2018nationality\u2019 or ethnic states and nation-states with equal rights for all citizens\u00a0 – of course, something far from being achieved in most states. Such nation-states could form a transition to a more universal, non-national, communist world, once all state boundaries are abolished.<\/p>\n One obvious field of struggle at present, to undermine ethnic national criteria, is support for migrant workers. We could confine ourselves to propaganda for \u2018no borders\u2019. However, any effective struggle in support of migrant workers today is going to amount to winning equal rights with worker citizens\/subjects in existing states, i.e. \u2018no one is illegal\u2019 – a particular state \u2018solution\u2019. Within such struggles communists should also argue for the prospect of creating wider unity, not only to improve rights for all, but to bring about a communist world where there are indeed no borders.<\/p>\n Communists should directly involve themselves in the full range of struggles against capitalist and imperial rule<\/strong><\/p>\n Although capitalism and capitalist imperialism have been dominant over the lives of workers and peoples of this planet for over a century and a half, its rule has never been uncontested.\u00a0 Capital doesn\u2019t just stride out over the world imposing its own logic unimpeded. Capital is a relationship involving capitalists at one pole and the working class at the other. The maintenance of the capital relationship depends on our subordination as workers – the owners of our living labour – to the controllers of our appropriated dead labour – the capitalists. There are also others involved in non-capitalist production relations who oppose attempts by capital to control their lives.<\/p>\n The conditions for ensuring our exploitation are not confined to the workplace, but also necessitate our oppression by the state. As a result, the contradictions of capitalism are also to be found in the various states of the world today. \u00a0Just as the controllers of capital face constant resistance from labour and others (passive and active, individual and collective), which challenges exploitation in the economic arena; so the various state ruling classes face constant resistance (cultural, social and political; reactionary, traditionalist and democratic), which challenges oppression in the state arena.<\/p>\n Capital has been unable to create a single world state, just as it has been unable to create a single capitalist corporation. The most that capitalism has attained is a global order politically organised around the existence and recognition of \u2018nation\u2019-states. The now economically dominant \u2018global\u2019 corporations are all registered in particular states – usually within the imperial metropoles.<\/p>\n Bourgeois ideology doesn\u2019t acknowledge the development of a world dominated by major corporations able to utilise their economic power to subordinate states to their own ends. Instead, we are told that we live in a world of freely competing enterprises, which only need minimal state intervention in the economy to prosper.<\/p>\n Similarly, we are told that the UN presides over a world of nation-states with equal representation in the General Assembly (\u2018world parliament\u2019). However, many of these so-called \u2018nation\u2019-states are barely nations at all, having been created from above by imperial diktat.\u00a0 In contrast, there are states, which have become major imperial powers, able to subordinate other \u2018nation\u2019-states both economically and politically.\u00a0 The Security Council is where the UN\u2019s key decisions are made. It resembles a cabinet coalition of hostile parties – a bit like the Northern Irish government, hence the need for vetoes.<\/p>\n For those of us, who argue that the working class educates itself and organises most effectively in struggle, it is vital to relate positively to the wide range of partial struggles (i.e. those still recoverable by capital), which arise both from capitalist exploitation and state oppression.<\/p>\n A useful analogy might be the struggle against the Anti-Trade Union laws. You could argue that, even before the Tories introduced these laws in the 1980s, the British ruling class and bosses still dominated our class, so the existence of Anti-Trade Union laws is not important. In contrast, I would argue that communists should be at the forefront of resistance to such laws, but not in the traditional Broad Leftist way, i.e. hoping the official TUC policy of opposition will lead to a future Labour government scrapping them. Instead, we should involve ourselves in struggles, which go on to actively and publicly defy these Anti-Trade Union laws.<\/p>\n Just as the existing TUC, wedded to social partnership, is completely unable to bring about its official policy of ending the anti-trade union laws, so, for example, the SNP, is unable to satisfy many Scottish people\u2019s wish for self-determination, due to its support for the current global corporate order (which means that the US provides support for the UK) and for the British monarchy (the SNP accepts the UK\u2019s anti-democratic Crown Powers).\u00a0 In both cases, this provides communists with the opportunity to show the need for independent class organisation and to push for our own solutions.<\/p>\n Clifford, though, seems to think that once it becomes clear, in the minds of communists, that all nationalism and all nation-states are bourgeois, all we need to do is condemn bourgeois nationalism and its leftist variant – \u2018socialism in one country\u2019.\u00a0 In effect, the role of communists is reduced to propaganda.<\/p>\n If communists adopted this stance in the economic arena, we would argue that when workers go on strike for improved wages, we should visit their picket lines and condemn them for not struggling against wage slavery. Alternatively, we can throw ourselves into providing effective solidarity, and help to create independent organisation (i.e. placing struggles under the control of those directly involved), where the debates can be made about the possibility of a real communist future, growing from existing struggles. This is also the approach we need to adopt towards other partial struggles too.<\/p>\n This, of course, involves making a judgement about the emancipatory potential of any particular struggle. The current weakness of the Left means that we face competitors who only offer workers complete dead ends, which further divide and weaken, e.g. fascists (whether traditional or neo), national chauvinists and religious supremacists.<\/p>\n Why the RCN takes up the partial democratic issue of the National Question in Scotland<\/strong><\/p>\n There is a democratic content to the National Question in Scotland (Ireland and Wales), leading to partial struggles of opposition, precisely because the UK is a constitutional monarchist, unionist and imperial state. The National Question is a real issue in Scotland, and the demand for self-determination is now a longstanding feature of Scottish politics. There is a large constituency within the national movement here that links this to opposition to Trident, NATO, continued imperial wars, privatisation and deregulation. Furthermore, amongst such supporters, it is quite possible to argue for an \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 approach, i.e. seeing the struggle, not as culminating in the setting up of another bourgeois state, but as part of the strategy to end the Crown Powers and the wider UK state, and to bring about wider international unity on a working class democratic basis.<\/p>\n When Thatcher and the Tories used Scotland as a testing ground for the poll tax in 1987, we might have said (as the SWP did) that there could be no effective resistance until the whole of the British trade union movement (i.e. TUC) was involved, or we could have built independent organisation and resistance in Scotland first, whilst highlighting the necessity (against the Scottish nationalists) of extending such organisation into England and Wales. Fortunately, the latter was the course taken and it led to the last major victory our class achieved against the Tories and their Labour accomplices.<\/p>\n Yes, as in any partial struggle, it is quite possible that the would-be Scottish ruling class, and its international allies (US, EU and possibly even British corporate capital in the future) could stymie the struggle for Scottish self-determination. We could end up with an SNP-led \u2018independent Scotland\u2019 acting as a low-tax haven for global capital, which participates in NATO\u2019s second-tier, non-nuclear, \u2018Partnership for Peace\u2019.\u00a0 It will depend on the balance of class forces and the political course chosen by the Left.<\/p>\n However, the one strategy, which would most likely lead to this decidedly sub-optimum outcome, is just leaving the National Question to the SNP and the Left nationalists. Indeed, such a course of action would be more likely to aid the further entrenchment of the current British ruling class strategy – maintaining the Union through \u2018Devolution-all-round\u2019 and propping up British imperialism with the UK state acting as junior partner to the USA, and continued British nuclear armed participation in the front-line of NATO. This is because the British ruling class has far more powerful class and international backing than an aspiring Scottish ruling class.<\/p>\n The significance of the UK state\u2019s anti-democratic Crown Powers<\/strong><\/p>\n We all have a shared interest in opposing the UK state\u2019s Crown Powers, which the British ruling class (which includes English, Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh members) have at its disposal. Behind Westminster\u2019s parliamentary fa\u00e7ade, the British ruling class used these powers to impose virtual military rule over \u2018the Six Counties\u2019 from the abolition of Stormont in 1972 until the Good Friday Agreement in 1996 (since then the role of the British Army has been downgraded, but \u201cthey haven\u2019t gone away, you know\u201d!) Even new housing plans were subjected to military scrutiny before they could be approved.<\/p>\n Now, of course, you could argue that the UK state (or even capital) dominated Northern Ireland under the old Stormont (1922-72), under Direct Rule (1972-98) and since the Good Friday Agreement. Yet, I would argue that it would represent real retrogression if old Stormont-type rule was restored in the Six Counties (as Traditional Unionist Voice and many Loyalists want) or, if British troops were able to re-establish permanent checkpoints, road blocks and everyday harassment.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t to argue that all is hunky-dory now – far from it. The UK state now asserts its control over the Six Counties by brokering between two politically-recognised communities – Unionist and Nationalist. This is not without its contradictions, which communists must highlight in order to further working class unity. This won\u2019t be an easy job, but an \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 approach – Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales – which demonstrates a shared hostility to the UK and Irish 26 Counties states and their leaders\u2019 current Peace Process\/\u2018Devolution-all-round\u2019 political strategy, will certainly be more useful than the more usual British Left approach – just unite around trade union demands, or leave it to the Irish\/Northern Irish to sort out their problems themselves.<\/p>\n When Irish workers and others took action, from the late 1960s, to oppose national oppression (e.g. police brutality, arbitrary arrests, imprisonment without trial, shoot-to-kill) we could have condemned them for looking for nationalist \u2018solutions\u2019. Or, we could have supported their resistance and promoted effective solidarity, whilst demonstrating the benefits of an internationalist approach.\u00a0 Instead of condemnation, or cheering on the IRA, usually from a safe distance, this would have meant organising, in the rest of the UK, to create the pressure over here to get the troops out. Unfortunately too few on the Left in the UK adopted this latter approach.<\/p>\n Communists need to expose and oppose these Crown Powers, for they will certainly be used against us in the future. If the unionist nature of the UK state makes the visibility of these powers more obvious in Ireland and Scotland, communists need to relate to any struggles arising from this; just as we recognised the leading role of miners amongst the wider working class when fighting the Tories between 1984-5, and didn\u2019t just say, \u201cWait, hold on, until the whole of our class is ready.\u201d<\/p>\n The difference between nationalism and national struggle, and between bourgeois \u2018internationalism\u2019 and working class internationalism<\/strong><\/p>\n Clifford attributes the following to me\u00a0 – \u201cAllan Armstrong\u2026 believes that nationalism is too important to be left to the nationalists\u201d.\u00a0 This is very much a case of attacking a straw man, since I have never made such a statement. What it does reveal is Clifford\u2019s inability to distinguish between national democratic struggle and nationalism.<\/p>\n For a long time there were socialists who used to argue that the struggle for women\u2019s rights was a diversion from the real struggle against capitalism. Following from this, both women\u2019s oppression and resistance to women\u2019s oppression were subsumed under the same labels – sexism or bourgeois feminism. I presume that Clifford supports the wider struggle for women\u2019s emancipation, and has supported the more limited struggle for abortion rights. Does this make Clifford a feminist?\u00a0 Or, would Clifford be just as happy to claim that \u2018the communist objective is to liberate humanity not to emancipate women\u2019?<\/p>\n Whilst I have made a critique of Lenin\u2019s approach to national democratic movements elsewhere, he did make a very important contribution to the debate on the National Question, when he wrote that, \u201cThe\u00a0elements<\/em>\u00a0of democratic and socialist culture are present, if only in rudimentary form, in\u00a0every<\/em>\u00a0national culture, since in every nation there are toiling and exploited masses, whose conditions give rise to the ideology of democracy and socialism.\u00a0\u00a0 But\u00a0every<\/em>\u00a0nation also possesses a bourgeois culture (and most nations a reactionary clerical culture as well) in the form, not merely of \u2018elements\u2019 but of the\u00a0dominant<\/em>\u00a0culture.\u201d\u00a0 Scotland, although part of the unionist British state, has a national culture, as do England, Ireland and Wales. In all these cases this national culture is contested.<\/p>\n Those, living within any particular national culture, who advocate a democratic and socialist approach, also support a very different form of internationalism from those upholding a bourgeois or reactionary approach. For example, the bourgeois nationalists, who now dominate the SNP, still want to maintain their own international connections – they support the continued existence of the current global corporate order (having close contacts with people from Sir George Mathewson of the Royal Bank of Scotland to the maverick American tycoon, Donald Trump), with the UK (i.e. they want to return to the pre-parliamentary union dating from before 1707, whilst maintaining the monarchical union dating from 1603!), with the Euro-bosses\u2019 EU (and its neo-liberalism enshrined in the post-Lisbon constitution), and they increasingly accept NATO too. Key sections of the Irish ruling class once had particularly close links to Cold War USA and to the pre-Second Vatican Council Papacy.<\/p>\n The RCN does not advocate a nationalist strategy, i.e. putting the nation\u00a0 – its principal property owners, future wannabes, or their allies – first. We advocate a class-based strategy of \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 to link workers, socialists\/communists and others. We also strongly support migrant workers\u2019 struggles, and seek more effective solidarity action with workers and the oppressed throughout a world dominated by capitalist imperialism (or corporate capital).<\/p>\n We are not Scottish nationalists, but Scottish internationalists. We are trying to develop a political path to bring more effective unity of the working class – firstly throughout these islands, and then by joining with others, on a global scale, to bring about a communism based on new forms of workers\u2019 association.<\/p>\n Propagandism or involvement in partial struggles<\/strong><\/p>\n Although Clifford makes statements such as \u201cpolitical rights cannot rise above the economic structure of society\u201d, it is not obvious from his contribution exactly what follows politically from this. Clifford makes the point that the \u201cgeneral right to self-determination is utopian\u201d. Having invoked Marx\u2019s\u00a0Critique of the Gotha Programme<\/em>\u00a0to provide backing for this, Clifford goes on to give his support to Luxemburg who also argued for such a view. However, he makes no mention of the fact that Marx didn\u2019t express any opposition to the following policy of the First International – support for \u201cthe right of every people to dispose of itself\u201d.\u00a0 Clearly, on some occasions, Marx was prepared to advocate general rights.<\/p>\n So, how is this apparent contradiction explained? It would be difficult to argue that Marx and Engels were not much concerned about the National Question at the time of the First International, and just let this particular policy go.\u00a0 They threw themselves wholeheartedly into the debates over Poland and Ireland. They took on the \u2018cosmopolitan\u2019 French Proudhinists and the British Leftist, trade unionist, Hales. I think the reason for Marx\u2019s apparent contradiction is that he is dealing with two different levels of politics – the development of theory and practical political intervention.<\/p>\n Capitalism is a crisis-ridden system, so it is important for communists to theoretically demonstrate that no economic or political right – e.g. the right to work, the right to self-determination – can ever be guaranteed under capitalism\/imperialism.\u00a0 This also goes for any likely prospect of increasing our living standards in the future. However, when workers or others assert their \u2018right to work\u2019, or their support for \u2018the right of national self-determination\u2019, in particular struggles and campaigns, they are expressing their own opposed class understanding of what kind of world should exist, whatever the current power holders say. In other words they don\u2019t necessarily accept capitalist or imperialist logic.<\/p>\n Bourgeois ideology may be dominant under capitalism, but as has already been demonstrated, it is still contested.\u00a0 This provides communists with an opening to make their case, provided we show some \u2018nous\u2019. Just telling those attending a public meeting that they have been conned by the bourgeoisie, by their invocation of a notion of \u2018abstract rights\u2019, and that they should be involved in an altogether different struggle, is unlikely to convince them in large numbers. However, it might pick up a few individual members to a sect.<\/p>\n Many nineteenth century communists and social democrats, including self-proclaimed Marxists like Daniel de Leon, resorted to a similar type of argument, to that which Clifford uses to dismiss any struggle for \u2018abstract rights\u2019. They supported Ferdinand Lassalle\u2019s \u2018Iron Law of Wages\u2019 to show that under capitalism economic or trade union struggles were a waste of time.\u00a0 Neither Marx nor Engels upheld this particular viewpoint, and James Connolly had to argue against de Leon over this too.<\/p>\n Clifford, though, seems to hold to an \u2018Iron Law of Democratic Limitations\u2019 under capitalism, analogous to the \u2018Iron Law of Wages\u2019. Can there be only one particular form of bourgeois state wherever capitalist social relations dominate? Does class struggle over the constitution or state practice really make no difference? Is there no possibility of partial democratic reform? Is there no difference between fascist\/military and parliamentary states, monarchist and republican states, or imperial and colonised states?<\/p>\n Clifford argues that, \u201cVietnam was oppressed by American imperialism until 1975, but then four years later became the oppressor of Cambodia.\u201d So what follows from this? Were the people of Vietnam wasting their time fighting against US imperialism? Are the Palestinians wasting their time resisting the Israeli state?<\/p>\n The political point Clifford wants to establish, i.e. that all nationalism works within limits set by capitalism\/imperialism is certainly true, but can just as easily be made against trade unionism or syndicalism. However, like nationalism, trade unionism\/syndicalism covers a wide range of forms (some positively hostile to even short-term working class interests)\u00a0 – e.g. fascist corporatism, yellow business unions and social partnerships, as well as free collective bargaining and class struggle unionism.<\/p>\n Now, there are still propagandist socialists and anarchists around today, who would argue that workers are wasting their time getting involved in trade union struggles, because they fail to address the root of the problem – wage slavery. Looking at the contributions to\u00a0the commune<\/em>\u00a0I don\u2019t think most participants would argue in such a way. Indeed, there has been a vibrant discussion about what is the best method by which workers can fight back against their current position brought about by corporate-promoted non-unionism (the bosses\u2019 preferred option) or social partnerships (their alternative method of neutering class struggle when having to legally recognise trade unions).<\/p>\n For a long time, the majority of the Left have argued for a Broad Left approach, i.e. replace the existing trade union leaders by new Left leaderships. I think most of\u00a0the commune\u00a0<\/em>readers can see the decided limitations of this approach. There has been debate between those advocating a more rank and file approach (transforming and democratising unions), anarcho-syndicalism (IWW) and independent trade unionism (Independent Workers Union). There has also been an interesting contribution about extending workplace-based trade unionism to cover working class communities – social unionism (maybe the contemporary form of an earlier \u2018One Big Union\u2019 debate).<\/p>\n I think it is vital that communists become involved in such struggles and debates. We must also clearly point to the limitations of all struggles confined to improving wages, social wages and conditions, and make the case for the abolition of wage slavery. How we do this more effectively is one of the important debates going on in\u00a0the commune<\/em>. Of course, this is easier when capitalism faces deep crisis and the possibility of improved living standards is visibly receding – as is the case just now.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, so that our advocacy of the communist alternative doesn\u2019t just end up as a mere propaganda exercise, we do need to link such arguments with active involvement in the many partial economic and social struggles, and to the promotion of independent organisations of our class.\u00a0 We also need to extend this participation to partial political struggles. For communists, the culmination of all these struggles is the replacement of the existing bourgeois state by workers\u2019 councils.<\/p>\n \u2018The British road to socialism\u2019 or \u2018internationalism from below\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Clifford asserts that the RCN\u2019s \u201cinternationalism from below\u201d just \u201cfloats through history appearing now as the Levellers then as the Chartists then again as United Irishmen, John MacLean or the resistance to the poll tax\u201d. This, though just reveals Clifford\u2019s own lack of understanding and empathy in this regard.<\/p>\n \u2018Internationalism from below\u2019 didn\u2019t just \u201cfloat\u201d but took much deeper root, as the English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh nations and the British UK state (and empire) developed, as a consequence of particular class struggles over a long period of history. Furthermore, \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 was created in antagonism to other approaches, e.g. the English Levellers\u2019 opposition to Cromwell\u2019s \u2018Godly English Republic\u2019; and the republican opposition of the United Irishmen, United Scotsmen, London Corresponding Society and US Democratic-Republicans to the UK constitutional monarchy and British Empire.<\/p>\n This year is the centenary of the publication of Connolly\u2019s\u00a0Labour in Irish History<\/em>, a classic presentation of a class-based view of the divisions within a particular nation in the struggle for national self-determination.\u00a0 Connolly was an Irish internationalist and anti-imperialist, who lived for most of his life in the UK – in Scotland and Ireland.<\/p>\n Now, it is true that a lot of this history is not well known because of the ideological dominance of the ruling class\u2019s British Whig view of history, and its Left variant – the \u2018British road to socialism\u2019. Worse still, it is least well understood by socialists\/communists in England despite the significant contribution of those from England to \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 struggles in the past. I would argue that this lack of understanding has partly arisen due to the activities of those very British socialists, who see it as one of their main task to defend a \u2018British road to socialism\u2019 – the former SDF\/BSP, the old and new CPGB, SWP, Militant\/SP and AWL, for example.<\/p>\n Clifford, who comes from an orthodox Trotskyist past, but is now in the dissident camp, could further develop his critique of orthodox Trotskyism and dissident Communist Partyism (e.g. the\u00a0Weekly Worker<\/em>), if he moved beyond his apparent acceptance of a \u2018British road to socialism\u2019.<\/p>\n Clifford also states that, \u201cAllan\u2019s republicanism is thus a timeless ideal of class determination\u201d.\u00a0 Now, this assertion may reflect a lack of familiarity with my practice and writings over a long period – fair enough, at least before the widespread use of the Internet, to which I am very much an unskilled late-comer.<\/p>\n However, from the days of the struggle against the poll tax (I was the chair of the first Anti-Poll Tax Federation – it formed in Lothian) to the widening division in the Irish Republican Movement between constitutional, dissident and socialist republicans (I have also been long involved in Irish solidarity work), I have offered a class analysis of unfolding events there (and their link with events and politics elsewhere in the UK).<\/p>\n The RCN has also published a pamphlet,\u00a0Republicanism, Socialism and Democracy,<\/em>\u00a0outlining our class-based analysis of republicanism. Again, for those readers of\u00a0the commune<\/em>\u00a0who are interested in these discussions, the RCN will make them available – some can already be found on our website.<\/p>\n However, there is another reason why republicanism isn\u2019t much understood in England. Republicanism is a fairly esoteric feature of English politics. In Ireland, Scotland and Wales, republicanism has deeper roots and forms part of the wider political and public debate.\u00a0 This situation has arisen because of greater opposition here to the Unionist constitutional monarchy, which has linked the National Question and republicanism. Where republicanism has developed enough strength to become an active factor in politics, it is always class contested. Therefore, it is vitally important to demonstrate clarity over where you stand on the issue. Unravelling the class nature of republicanism has always been central to the RCN\u2019s politics.<\/p>\n In conclusion, I would argue that it is the job of communists to identify those partial struggles – economic, social, cultural and political\u00a0 – which help us to strengthen the working class and others who are oppressed in the here and now.\u00a0 At the same time, through promoting independent organisation (including of communists ourselves), we can make real the possibility of the communist alternative, already latent, but constantly suppressed within capitalism.\u00a0 \u2018Internationalism from below\u2019 is a vital component in this endeavour.<\/p>\n Allan Armstrong, 18.8.10<\/strong><\/p>\n * Rosa Luxemburg had initially argued that national democratic movements could no longer play any progressive role in any of the European states (including Tsarist Russia), which she considered to be dominated by capitalist social relations. However, she still thought that national democratic movements could play a progressive role in pre-capitalist societies like the Ottoman Empire (she supported the struggles of the Greeks in Crete and the Armenians). However, the Neo-Luxemburgists, such as Bukharin from 1916, and the German Left Communists \u00a0after World War I, argued that national democratic movements could no longer play any progressive role anywhere in the world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n THE RCN\u2019S \u2018INTERNATIONALISM FROM BELOW\u2019 AND THE CASE OF SCOTLAND: <\/strong><\/p>\n A CRITICAL VIEW <\/strong><\/p>\n \u2018Joe Thorne\u2019 <\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0The Republican Communist Network (Scotland) has developed a distinctive view on the national question which they call \u2018Internationalism from below<\/a>\u2018. Although the theory represents a comprehensive attempt to deal with the national question, in this article I will solely discuss it through the prism of the question of Scottish independence. This provides the most obvious and relevant case study through which to draw out the real implications of the theory, an approach which is necessary since I will be unable here to develop a comprehensive alternative account of the national question.<\/p>\n This article represents a moment in an ongoing dialogue between members of the RCN and The Commune, and it is based on the author\u2019s notes from conversations with RCN members. I have read Allan\u2019s recent article on \u2018Internationalism from Below\u2019 but have not been able to find a more comprehensive and specific defence of the RCN\u2019s position on Scottish independence in writing elsewhere.<\/p>\n A word on nationalism. The RCN define nationalism, fairly conventionally, as a movement in defence of a, or towards an as yet non-existent, state for a \u201cnation\u201d. A nation, similarly conventionally, is understood as an \u201cimagined community\u201d which despite being imaginary \u2013 i.e. there is no overall unity of interest, for communists, between the conflicting social classes represented in the nation \u2013 is nonetheless real because it constitutes a politically powerful aspect of the subjective landscape. Nations are imaged, but real, and sometimes they become more real still as their subjective power remakes the objective world in its image.<\/p>\n The RCN denounce nationalism in both its conventional and \u2018left\u2019 manifestations. They are, however, positively in favour of Scottish national independence. The purpose of this article is to provide a critical account of the reasons RCN members give for their pro-independence position, as well as the mechanisms by which they think it could come about.<\/p>\n How could independence happen?<\/strong><\/p>\n There are two scenarios by which RCN members might envisage independence coming about:<\/p>\n i) constitutional: a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament voting for a referendum on the question and Westminster feeling politically unable to refuse. The question on the referendum would be determined, in the end, by Westminster. If the vote was carried for independence, in this scenario, Westminster would feel compelled to grant it.<\/p>\n ii) proto-revolutionary: a working class upheaval, centred round economic or social demands, acquiring a pro-national independence perspective as part of its conflict with the UK state. In order to be successful, independent of constitutional methods, such an upheaval would have to be proto-revolutionary, involving soviet-type structures and militant workers\u2019 autonomy. Such a proto-revolutionary wave may well of course subside without producing a generalised social revolution, which \u2013 were it to occur \u2013 could hardly be isolated in Scotland. In this article I will not consider scenarios where international communism is produced by revolution, since in such a case the affective autonomy of any local area so wishing could therefore be assumed.<\/p>\n The above scenarios are somewhat stylised and polarised. Of course, any constitutional independence movement would involve some grassroots activity, and no doubt in large part be an expression of social, everyday discontent. And it may well be that a proto-revolutionary insurgency would force, or be defrayed by, constitutional measures.<\/p>\n For our present discussion I am ignoring the possibility of a fundamentally nationalist, reactionary movement based either on mass mobilisation or para-military action. This is because we can take it as read that the RCN would be opposed to such developments.<\/p>\n Nonetheless the above typology is necessary in order to discuss, in concrete terms, the political significance of the demand for independence.<\/p>\n It should be said at this stage that, I understand, the RCN are primarily advocates of the proto-revolutionary scenario. Whilst they say there should be a referendum, and whilst they would strongly advocate a yes vote, they believe the British ruling class would be highly unlikely to allow such a scenario to develop. In support of this view, one RCN member recounted to me the measures taken by the state at the time of the 1979 devolution referendum (which returned 51.6% for devolution and 48.4% against but failed due to a stipulation regarding turnout). These included scare stories, agents provocateur, and military exercises off the coast of Scotland. Nonetheless, RCN support for independence is not conditional upon that taking place on a mass working-class, republican, or socialist basis.<\/p>\n We will return to an examination of these scenarios later, after a discussion of the various reasons given by RCN members for advocating independence.<\/p>\n Arguments for independence<\/strong><\/p>\n As part of this I need to explain my general perspective on the matter at hand.<\/p>\n I am neither for nor against Scottish independence in principle but tend to think that it is not useful for communists to positively argue for it at present. I do think, however, that if people in Scotland want independence they should have it, and any attempts \u2013 whether violent or bureaucratic \u2013 to stop them should be opposed.<\/p>\n Although I am neither for nor against Scottish independence in principle I can conceive of circumstances in which I may \u2013 I say this cautiously since my mind\u2019s not made up \u2013 be able to see independence as a demand I could support. In outline, this would be in the context of a strong, independent working class movement, for whom independence was a broad and deep demand, and objectively a necessary means to advance its power. \u00a0Furthermore, it would need to be the case that independence was not in real terms an alternative to perspective based upon spreading working class struggle, as working-class struggle.\u00a0 Such circumstances may arise, but they are far from guaranteed to do so.\u00a0 In fact, I confess I think them unlikely.<\/p>\n I will now consider six arguments for independence (a \u2013 f) which rather than quoting specific individuals , I have constructed on the bases of a number of independent comments I have heard and things I have read.<\/p>\n a) \u201cIndependence would represent a significant step in the \u2018break up of the UK state\u2019 which would weaken the UK state. It would therefore weaken UK imperialism and imperialism in general. The UK ruling class is strongly opposed to independence.\u201d<\/p>\n Scotland is home to 5 million UK citizens, 5% of UK GDP, Europe\u2019s sixth largest finance sector in Edinburgh, four Trident submarines (with around 200 nuclear warheads and 58 ballistic missiles), four regular British Army garrisons, three frontline RAF bases and six Royal Navy bases. On its North Sea coast lie oil reserves perhaps amounting to 30 billion barrels.<\/p>\n Since the power of modern states is based in part upon their capitalist productivity and in part on their capacity to project military power, and much less strongly although still in part on their population, it seems true that Scottish independence would weaken the UK state\u2019s ability to project imperial power, at least in the short term.<\/p>\n However, there are several reasons to think that such a weakening would be relatively minor, partial and \u2013 most importantly \u2013 would not lead to an overall weakening of imperialism as such, or even the particular imperialist bloc of which Britain is part.<\/p>\n i) Most obviously, military bases could be relocated, or a deal reached for their continued use. It would be possible to make up the loss in military personnel were there a need for it. It is far from certain that either the constitutional or revolutionary scenario would lead to the \u00a312 billion per annum UK share of oil reserves accruing to an independent Scotland \u2013 or even that there will be very much left of it remaining unless independence is achieved within a couple of decades. The loss in population and productive capital would not be large, while GDP per capita in the remainder of the UK would rise. Unless Scotland joined the EU \u2013 and adopted the associated neo-liberal legal framework \u2013 much capital would relocate to Britain. Only establishing Scotland as a sort of low-tax, low-regulation, business friendly environment could stop this.<\/p>\n ii) It is likely that an independent capitalist Scotland would simply rejoin the US\/UK imperialist bloc. Imperialism is today, far more than in the 19th century, an interstate system, although there are always very much senior and junior partners. With the same material resources, the bloc would be no weaker than before, just composed of one more state. So it is not even clear that US imperialism would be effectively weakened. Note that this is in no way precluded by the proto-revolutionary independence scenario, assuming that capitalist social relations are left in place.<\/p>\n iii) Even if it didn\u2019t join the US\/UK bloc, Scotland \u2013 still capitalist in the absence of international communist revolution \u2013 would simply be forced to join another imperialist bloc, which would be no better. Once again, because proto-revolutionary waves can subside, this possibility is not precluded by the proto-revolutionary scenario. Even if a more \u2018left-wing\u2019 capitalist government held power in a Scotland outside the US\/UK imperialist bloc, there is no guarantee it would be less imperialist. Consider the example of France \u2013 one possible imperialist partner for an independent Scotland. In 1994 it facilitated the Rwandan genocide under the presidency of Parti Socialiste leader Francois Mitterrand and in the context of one of the most self-confident and class-conscious proletariats anywhere in the world.<\/p>\n iv) Even if it was true that the US\/UK bloc was weakened, this would not necessarily contribute greatly to the weakening of imperialism as such. The US-led bloc is early in what is most likely to be a long but terminal decline from global hegemony, whilst Chinese imperialism \u2013 most clearly of all \u2013 is on the rise.<\/p>\n Since, at least in the proto-revolutionary scenario, Scottish independence may be a relatively distant prospect, the overall significance of any minor weakening of the US\/UK power bloc may be much reduced.<\/p>\n v) The most important \u201cweakness\u201d of any state is its own working class, that is currently the English as well as Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish working class. Potentially by placing a relatively militant, leftward Scottish working class outside the UK state, independence could conceivably make the UK state stronger.<\/p>\n vi) Just because the UK ruling class is opposed to something doesn\u2019t mean the working class should be for it.\u00a0 It is quite possible that a given national ruling class is opposed to a certain measure because it involves losing ground to another national ruling class, rather than to the working class.\u00a0 In such cases, the working class has no need to take sides.<\/p>\n vii) As has been said before:<\/p>\n But, someone may ask, why the support in the first place? The answer provided [by Trotskyists] is an example of historical scheme -making: U.S. imperialism will be weakened\u2019 by such movements. Such a \u2018weakening\u2019 will impart another \u2018transitional\u2019 twitch to the \u2018death agony of capitalism\u2019 which in turn will foster other twitches \u2026 and so on. Like all mystifications, Trotskyism fails to give a coherent answer as to why, especially since 1945, imperialism has been able to grant political independence to many ex -colonial countries, a possibility that Lenin and Trotsky explicitly denied.1<\/a><\/p>\n Indeed, it seems true that whilst imperialism has changed vastly since World War II, it is not now weaker as a global phenomenon than it was then \u2014 despite the global unfolding of national independence.<\/p>\n b) \u201cThe demand for Scottish independence is a democratic, republican demand. It is therefore a necessary component of a communist perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n Here I will confine myself to the relation between republicanism and national independence, rather than provide a general perspective on republicanism.<\/p>\n In a RCN pamphlet Bob Goupillot explains that republicanism:<\/p>\n seeks to develop a programme for expanding democracy under capitalism as far as it will go. It concerns itself with progressive and in some senses transitional demands. To the extent that we achieve these democratic demands, it will strengthen our class and will weaken the ruling class and its allies. It is a necessary and unavoidable part of the struggle for socialism.2<\/a><\/p>\n For the RCN, independence would represent a democratic advance under capitalism and would therefore \u201cstrengthen our class\u201d. While republicanism in general is a \u201cnecessary and unavoidable\u201d part of the revolutionary process, it is not clear whether Scottish independence, specifically, is held to be necessary in this way or not. I would like to offer some arguments against seeing independence for Scotland as a necessary component of republicanism, or republican demands as a necessary part of communist propaganda.<\/p>\n i) In general, I agree that, all other things being equal (they never are) greater capitalist democracy is an advantage for the working class in its grassroots struggle. For example, I tend to think the AMS (additional member system), not to mention citizen initiated recall votes and referenda for representatives would make capitalists less likely to attack the working class (none of which necessarily makes such reforms an item on the agenda of the class struggle). However, it is hard to see why Scottish independence as such would provide an instance of that. This is because neither smaller states as such, nor states with roughly national boundaries are \u2013 all things being equal \u2013 ipso facto more democratic. Neither, in itself, implies a greater level of formal democracy.<\/p>\n ii) Secondly, communists ought not to reify \u201cnational independence\u201d and hence do not reify the nation as such \u2013 but rather are in favour of the fullest local autonomy for all those who want it, regardless of whether the unit in question constitutes a \u201cnation\u201d. That is, republicanism as such need not see Scotland as more (or less) deserving of autonomy than Fife or North Yorkshire. The republican demand is surely \u201cautonomy for all those who want it\u201d, not \u201cautonomy for each nation\u201d. The question here is not \u201cis Scotland a nation?\u201d \u2013 it is \u2013 but ought communists necessarily to privilege the nation as a political unit? I argue, not at all.<\/p>\n Sometimes, movements against national oppression may mean that some nations end up developing as immediate bases for political autonomy. In such cases, perhaps it may make sense to positively support a concrete, working class movement for such autonomy. But as I argue below, Scotland is not subject to national oppression in this way.<\/p>\n iii) It is true that the UK state has on its statute books a whole array of \u201ccrown powers\u201d which could be used to legitimate attacks on the revolutionary working class in any part of the UK. But, firstly, there is no necessary reason why the Scottish working class should not end up fighting these powers on the same terms as the English working class. Secondly, there is no reason that the working class will necessarily fight against the crown powers as laws, rather than just in terms of concrete battles against their manifestations. Thirdly, these crown powers are merely the legal expression of things which the UK or Scottish ruling class would likely be prepared to do illegally if those laws did not exist.<\/p>\n The above arguments criticise the positive demand for independence on republican, democratic grounds. They show that the most ardent republican democrat would not necessarily be compelled to call for Scottish independence.<\/p>\n c) \u201cEven under capitalism, an independent Scottish state \u2013 perhaps somewhat more republican \u2013 would deliver a more \u2018progressive\u2019, left wing social and fiscal policy.\u201d<\/p>\n The RCN, as internationalists, are not for socialism in one country. However, whilst talking about Scottish independence, the above sentiment does sometimes emerge as a theme of discussion. Indeed, it is an implicit premise of the argument that \u201cstruggles to defend social provision\u201d can take the form of an independence struggle.<\/p>\n Today, in numerous areas, including higher education and homelessness, Scotland does indeed use its limited devolved powers to pursue policies which are somewhat more pro-working class than those effective in England and Wales.<\/p>\n However, if the international decline of left social democracy over the last 30 years tells us anything, it is that \u2018progressive\u2019 fiscal policy cannot be detached from the dynamism of domestic capital.<\/p>\n At present, ignoring revenues from North Sea Oil, Scotland is subsidised by the rest of the UK to the tune of about \u00a31,500 per head. Taking oil into account the flow does run somewhat the other way but as mentioned previously, (a) It is unlikely that North Sea Oil would be controlled by an independent Scotland, and (b) the oil probably does not have very long left to run and may well dry up before Scottish independence is assured.<\/p>\n In consequence, it may very well be the case that independence would precipitate a decline in the fiscal position of the Scottish state apparatus, and consequent decline in social provision in Scotland. As a further consequence therefore, it is at best unclear how independence would form part of struggles to defend the \u2018social wage\u2019 in Scotland.<\/p>\n d) \u201cAlthough the Scottish do not experience national oppression in an equivalent way to Palestinians in Palestine or Tamils in Tamil Eelam, there are nonetheless ways in which Scotland is subject to real national oppression which materially affects the day to day lives of its population\u201d<\/p>\n In this section I will not consider the argument that the lack of independence in itself constitutes national oppression consisting of the denial of democratic rights. This perspective, I examine in the section dealing with republicanism as a political perspective. Here, I am concerned with national oppression insofar as it affects the day to day lives of people in Scotland.<\/p>\n Calls for independence are not necessarily the correct response to national oppression, but serious national oppression could seem to strengthen the case for calls for independence.<\/p>\n In conversations with RCN members, I have heard it suggested that the early implementation of the poll tax in Scotland and the closing of Scotland\u2019s heavy industries \u2013 particularly mining and ship building \u2013 have constituted national oppression. \u00a0In the case of the heavy industries, I am not aware of any evidence that Scottish workplaces have been targeted more because they are Scottish, any more that those in Labour-voting areas in the north of England for example.<\/p>\n The Scottish working class ignited the struggle against the poll tax – but is the demand for independence a positive one?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>Concerning the poll tax, however, it is possible to be more definite.\u00a0 Contrary to popular perception, the poll tax was not implemented in Scotland first in order to use Scotland as a \u201cguinea pig\u201d. Nor was any part of the reason for implementing the tax in Scotland a year earlier than England and Wales as part of an assault on the Scottish working class as such. Rather, the poll tax came first to Scotland as a consequence of two main factors.<\/p>\n Firstly, the limited extent to which Scotland was already enshrined in UK law at the time as a distinct administrative entity. The 1975 Local Government (Scotland) Act mandated a ratings (local government tax) revaluations system distinct from that prevailing in England and Wales, although 5 yearly revaluations had once been uniform. (see McConnell, Alan (1995), State Policy Formation and the origins of the Poll Tax, pages 80 and 200). The fact that rates revaluations were on a different timetable \u2013 even given the provision for delay which were utilised from the 1981 Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions)(Scotland) Act \u2013 in Scotland prompted the Conservative government to rush in the Poll tax, rather than raise rates.<\/p>\n Secondly, against this background, the need of Scottish Tories \u2013 in particular senior figures like George Younger and Malcolm Rifkind \u2013 to secure their core vote. That core vote, as epitomised by single, elderly people living in large family houses, was heavily hostile to the rates, and could not be expected, it was thought, to accept the financial consequences of revaluation. In consequence, as one authoritative volume puts it, the poll tax \u201cwas only introduced in Scotland first because of George Younger\u2019s determination to have the necessary legislation on the statute-books before the general election, expected to be in 1987\u2033 (Butler, Adonis, Travers (1994) Failure in British Government: the Politics of the Poll Tax, page 101). Tory MPs \u201cwere told by Younger and Rifkind that it was \u2018utterly vital\u2019 for the Tories\u2019 electoral prospects north of the border.\u201d (p. 103)<\/p>\n In this context, the early introduction of the poll tax in Scotland was less an intentional attack on the Scottish working class because they were Scottish, but rather an accidental product of differentiated \u2013 but not necessarily discriminatory \u2013 UK law, and the sectional, electoral interests of Scottish Tories.<\/p>\n e) \u201cIndependence for Scotland could be a spark that ignites working class insurgency against the UK state, and perhaps other capitalist states\u201d<\/p>\n As advocates of working class internationalism, the RCN are not interested only in the Scottish working class, but the broader UK and global working class as well. They believe Scottish independence could contribute to the struggle of the proletariat outside Scotland, for two reasons.<\/p>\n The first is that an independence struggle on the proto-revolutionary model, over economic or social demands, could spark equivalent action over similar demands elsewhere. However, it is not clear why working class action in Scotland would have to have a specifically pro-independence character in order to have such a \u201ccontagious\u201d effect on the Scottish proletariat. (In fact, it is conceivable that national demands could obscure the social, class base of these demands and hence tend to retard their generalisation). Working class struggles have a record of spreading internationally that indicates no necessary need for them to have a national character. This first argument, therefore, does not provide a reason for communists to advocate Scottish independence in addition to the militant mobilisation on which we all agree.<\/p>\n The second argument raised by comrades in the RCN says that, since the UK ruling class would do everything in its power to thwart any independence movement, the mobilisation of militants in England and Wales would be necessary to defeat the ruling class, and achieve independence. However, once again, the UK ruling class can be expected to react with similar vehemence to a proto-revolutionary insurgency around purely socio-economic demands, thereby providing the same potential spark for the struggle to be generalised.<\/p>\n f) \u201cThere is a real dynamic towards independence in the Scottish working class. We need to relate to that dynamic to stop it turning ugly and because it represents a legitimate, democratic \u2013 even socialistic \u2013 aspiration.\u201d<\/p>\n In truth, the dynamic, such as it is, is rather minor. Most polls demonstrate support for greater devolution of tax-raising powers is more popular than independence. Even given a straight choice between independence or the status quo, even the polls showing the greatest pro-independence sentiment only show barely 50% backing for secession from the UK.<\/p>\n As indicated earlier, there are some circumstances under which \u2013 in the context of a working class upsurge and a strong pro-independence dynamic within that \u2013 it may make sense to support that demand due to its implicit class character. Chris Ford has argued that Ukraine during the revolutionary wave of 1916-22 was such a case \u2013 though I do not know enough about that myself to evaluate the claim independently.\u00a0 Thus, my argument here against the demand for independence is not a timeless one. Rather it is based on the concrete balance of class forces, and the subjective position of the Scottish working class in particular.\u00a0 However, it is very, very far from guaranteed \u2014 it is even very unlikely \u2014 that a national independence movement with a positive class character would ever emerge.\u00a0 The reality is that examples of such movements in history are very few and far between, and all are contested.<\/p>\n Conclusions<\/strong><\/p>\n Any proto-revolutionary scenario is far away.\u00a0 But in such a scenario, what would be the significance of demands for national independence?\u00a0 The RCN argue in good faith that their potential significance would be a means to make the workers\u2019 struggle more powerful, and help it spread internationally.\u00a0 But there must be real reasons to doubt this.\u00a0 Is it not at least as possible that emphasis on the nation as a political unit, and the independent \u201crepublican\u201d state as a worthwhile aim in itself, will inevitably de-emphasise tendencies toward generalising the struggle internationally, on a revolutionary class basis?<\/p>\n I offer the above arguments for the consideration of comrades in the RCN, and others, as part of an ongoing dialogue within the communist milieu. In that light I would like to make a couple of things clear about my position.<\/p>\n Firstly it is not a cryptic attempt to justify the idea that Scottish revolutionary organisations ought to be \u2018subject\u2019 to a broader UK one. I disagree with this view. As suggested earlier, I am for the maximum of local (or group, or individual) autonomy at every level insofar as that is compatible with whatever organisation\u2019s platform is in question.<\/p>\n Secondly, I would be totally opposed to any attempts of the UK state to suppress any real working class independence movement, and would support mobilisation against such attempts.<\/p>\n Finally, I am certainly not a \u201cunionist\u201d, nor a British or English nationalist. I consider myself an internationalist, and at that one who thinks all good things come from below. My objection is to neither of these component parts of \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 but to the specific conclusion that communists ought to be involved in calling for Scottish independence.<\/p>\n 1<\/a> http:\/\/libcom.org\/library\/third-worldism-or-socialism-solidarity-group<\/a><\/p>\n2. The confederalist approach<\/h3>\n
3. The cosmopolitan approach<\/h3>\n
4. Historical antecedents of confederalism and cosmopolitanism<\/h3>\n
5. The beginnings of an \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 approach<\/h3>\n
6. The distinction between nations and nationalities; and chauvinist superiority disguised as cosmopolitanism<\/h3>\n
7. \u2018Internationalism from below\u2019 and secularism compared to cosmopolitanism and state-atheism, and to state-promoted multi-ethnicity and religious toleration.<\/h3>\n
8. Engels opposes an early British Left upholder of the \u2018one-state\/one-party\u2019 principle<\/h3>\n
9. \u2018One-state\/one-party\u2019 – a cover for social chauvinism; separatist parties a cover for social patriotism<\/h3>\n
10. The contradictions of the Second International, Luxemburg and Lenin in their pursuit of the \u2018one-state\/one-party\u2019 principle<\/h3>\n
11. Marx and Engels abandon their unilinear model of progress<\/h3>\n
12. \u2018Internationalism from below\u2019 in today\u2019s conditions<\/h3>\n
13. Resistance in the here and now<\/h3>\n
References<\/h2>\n
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