Dimitrios Patelis | Revolutionary Unification (Greece)
Contents
• Introduction
• Nationalities, nations, classes and the logic of history
• Nation and capitalism. Imperialism and the national question
• Socialist revolutions, the national question and anti-imperialism
• The national question and anti-imperialism: from WWII to WWIII
• From formal to actual independence and sovereignty
• Opportunism working consistently at the service of the imperialist axis
• In conclusion
Introduction
As the ongoing Third World War is escalating, the interconnection between the national, the transnational and the global is being brought to the surface in an increasingly dramatic way. States and coalitions of states are involved in this conflict. Some states are primarily comprised of a single nation, while others are multinational. The causes or pretexts of the tensions and fronts of the war are presented as national claims, irredentism, aspirations and claims for national independence and sovereignty or voluntary submission to dependent relations of subordination, confrontations for the imposition of whichever ‘order of things’ is beneficial to imperialism.
In this context, the imperialist dominators either ignore some nations altogether, or even treat them in the most cynical way, as objects for manipulation, instrumentalisation (in proxy wars) and genocide. In dominant narratives, nationalist and racist ideologies of the ‘superiority’ of a certain nation or nations over the ‘inferiority’ of others are also emerging in view.
Suddenly, nations, peoples and states are ‘discovered’, ‘invented’, ‘constructed’, ‘reconstructed’ or deconstructed, dismantled and annihilated en masse, depending on the circumstances, in accordance to the dominant interests, objectives and balance of forces.
Several questions therefore arise: what is a nation? When and from where did the nation emerge historically? How is it related to the whole of economic, social, political, ideological, cultural, etc. determinants of the totality of society? How is the national question related to class struggle? How is the national question transformed by the socialist revolutions and the anti-colonial struggle? What is the position and role of the nation and the national question today? How is the rapid change in the global balance of power portrayed at the level of vulgar social psychology and ideological constructions? Does the demand for self-determination of nations constitute an absolute ahistorical principle? Is every national movement worthy of internationalist solidarity?
These questions, the degree and manner of their realisation, dictate the need for some remarks from the point of view of Marxist-Leninist theory and practice, in awareness of the difficulty of the issues at hand and the necessity of vigilance and discourse.
Nationalities, nations, classes and the logic of history
History is an objective process governed by laws. The emergence of the logic of history allows us to view the historical process as a contradictory course of gradual transformation of predominantly natural (biological, geographical, ecological, climatological, etc.) ties and conditions into purely social ones, during which the former are dialectically ‘sublated’ by the latter (see V.A. Vaziulin: The Logic of History). In this process, various formations and categorisations of the population are constituted, reconstructed, transformed, interact, or are even eradicated (especially in pre-Capitalist formations) where relations of natural origin initially predominate: blood ties, relations to the community (tribal―clan, territorial and agricultural) that is gradually transformed by the rise of private property.
It is absolutely essential to identify the general direction of ethnogenesis through the prism of dialectical laws, the logic of history.
With the emergence of private property and antagonistic classes, begins the transformation of natural ties of origin (tribes, clans etc.). As long as the latter have not been fully transformed, they do not simply coexist idly as parts of the same mechanism alongside social classes (constituted according to the dominant form of private property), but are interwoven with them and (to the extent that they are differentiated from them) interact with them organically. Established and hereditarily transmitted hierarchical relations (slave-ownership, feudalism) are constituted on the basis of relations of natural origin (preserved in class society in a sublated /transformed form).
Class socio-economic formations constitute gradients of interaction/transformation of the community from the successive historical forms of private property, until the essential ‘sublation’ of the former, when the latter acquires a basis corresponding to itself (under capitalism), when classes reach their most developed form. In these formations, population groups―historical communities of people―that fluctuate in historical space and time play a formative structural role: from packs, to the forager clans and tribes of the primitive community (initially nomadic hunter/gatherers and herders and then permanently settled farmers), to slave-owning communities (from city-states to empires), feudal peasant communities under serfdom and feudal monarchies/empires (as associations of feuds and feudal dominions), peoples, ethnic groups/nationalities and finally nations.
The nation is not ‘constructed’, but is shaped as a contradictory formation under capitalism (by overcoming feudal fragmentation) with the constitution of unified economic ties (internal market of the nation-state), geographic territory and language (‘direct reality of cognition’, ‘practical consciousness’―K. Marx). It is on this objective historical basis that any common elements of intellectual life, intellectual culture, consciousness, ideology and so on are rooted, but also the contradictory nature of every national civilization connected with class struggle (in every ‘national’ civilization there are two civilizations―V.I. Lenin). Any reconfigurations of this objective basis also reconfigure the contradictory formation of the nation. The ideologies put forward by the ruling class also stem from the same objective basis.
To summarize the above, let’s look at a concise definition: a nation is a historically formed community of people, constituted in the course of acquiring a common place of territorial settlement and residence, establishing common economic relations―relations of production (internal market under capitalism), a common scholarly language (which largely eliminates the idioms and dialects inherited from the feudal fragmentation of society, through literature, poetry, formal education and which may result as an official state language), as well as certain specific elements of culture―traditions, mentality, social psychology and character.
In a classic statement, ‘A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.’ (J. V. Stalin, Marxism and the National Question).
The dominant confusion in bourgeois philosophy, sociology and historiography of the concepts of the nation is not accidental. For bourgeois thought and ideology, the contemporary nation is projected and perceived as a timeless continuity from the indefinite past, e.g. from the primitive community of tribes and clans. Other approaches link the nation constitutionally with the state, with the ‘national spirit’ (national consciousness, national character, national identity) as the primary, if not the only, characteristic of the nation. There are also approaches that reduce the nation to a ‘psychological concept’, an ‘unconscious mental community’, or to a community of ‘national character’. V. I. Lenin sharply criticized a number of similar concepts and showed their idealistic essence.
The formation of the nation may be favoured by the existence of some national affinity or racial proximity, but this is not a necessary condition. Most nations have been formed as a historical synthesis of various races, nationalities and ethnic groups. It is therefore highly unscientific to confound the concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘race’, especially when the latter is attributed with properties of alleged ‘biological predetermination’ and ‘purity’… Moreover, a nation is not uniquely determined by a particular religion, religious denomination or tradition, nor even by the existence of a nation-state.
Based on the theory of K. Marx, F. Engels and V. I. Lenin, the nation emerges and is formed according to dialectical law as a novel historical phenomenon, in the process of overcoming of the feudal fragmentation of society and the establishment of centralised political power within the framework of rising capitalist economic relations.
Of course, the formation of the nation is preceded by a long process of formation of various historical forms of communities, namely ethnogenesis.
Long-term cohabitation of people connected by a common economy, territory and language also leads to a community of intellectual life. The linguistic, territorial, economic and cultural community of people, which was formed historically and preceded the nation, is termed nationality. Nationalities first appeared during the period of the consolidation of tribal unions. It is in this context that tribal coalescence escalates and is gradually accompanied by the replacement of blood ties by territorial ties (the transition from a community of clans to a territorial community). This gives rise to the nationalities of the slave-owning era (Egypt, Greece, Rome, etc. in antiquity).
In some regions (e.g. in Europe) the formation of such pre-capitalist linguistic, territorial and cultural communities, i.e. nationalities, is mainly completed under feudalism (ancient Russian, Polish, French, etc. nationalities), while elsewhere, this historical process is ongoing. Some nationalities are formed from tribes related by descent and language, e.g. Polish from Slavic tribes: the Poles of Vistula, Mazovians, etc., while others are formed from tribes with different languages, the fusion of which came about through conquests and the absorption of some tribes from others, such as French, formed from Gallic tribes, Roman colonists and Germanic tribes: Franks, Visigoths, Burgundians, etc.). In the course of this ethnogenesis, through the strengthening of ties between constituent tribes, one of the languages or dialects of the nationality under formation (due to population and/or level of development) becomes the basis for the formation of the common language of the nationality, with a corresponding degradation of the others into dialects or even their gradual disappearance/integration into the common one. This process leads to the formation of a single economic, territorial and cultural community with a corresponding name. A process which is sometimes accompanied by and consolidated by the establishment of a single centralised state (e.g. in the form of a monarchy, a fiefdom union), while elsewhere there is no such direct coincidence of state and linguistic territory.
With the development of commodity and monetary relations in depth (the terms of production―means, objects, materials and labour power―are transformed into commodities) and in breadth (internal market), capitalist relations dominate, thus strengthening economic and cultural ties. In this way, nationalities are transformed into nations. Nationalities suddenly separated by state borders are at some point the origins of some national formations (such as the Portuguese and the Galicians, the Germans, the Austrians and the Luxembourgers, etc.). Elsewhere, populations originating from a few ethno-linguistic communities are united into a single state (e.g. Switzerland, Belgium), always in accordance with specific historical correlations of internal and external tendencies and forces.
In any case, since ethnogenesis is initiated from the primitive community and culminates in the subsequent socio-economic formations, it is intertwined at many levels with the respective modes of production of slave-owning and feudal structures, hence it is faced with the problem of established classes (hereditary positions and privileges).
Nation and capitalism. Imperialism and the national question
Wherever the phenomenon of ethnogenesis is launched in conjunction with the decline of feudalism and the rise, development and consolidation of capitalist relations of production within the nation-state, the nation takes on characteristics of development in a more or less ‘pure form’. This applies to a few cases of European countries, e.g. France. In this historical epoch, the rising bourgeoisie takes on a progressive and revolutionary role; it leads the front of social and political forces (working class, poor peasantry, progressive intellectuals, etc.) under the banner of the ‘national idea’. In these cases, the nation is largely synonymous with the ‘people’, whose frontal formation constitutes the broader historical subject of the revolutionary process of the time, leading to victory over the forces of feudalism and its remnants, not only in the economic field, but also at the level of the political, legal/institutional and broader state superstructure.
However, even in this process that is unfolding in ‘pure form’, the relation between social forces of progress and reaction is not fixed, linearly constant and unambiguous. The social and political alliances themselves are historically fluid at different phases of this revolutionary process. Moreover, even at the moment of the most brilliant revolutionary milestones of such peoples, at the international level the main forces claiming or even holding power in this struggle, continue or even intensify their horrific repression of the colonies. Even during the most revolutionary outbreaks of the rise of capitalism, what prevails is an ‘ethnocentric’ and/or Eurocentric tendency to focus on the internal tasks of the colonial metropolis, the ‘civilised countries’. The periphery of the colonies, the other peoples, continue to be perceived even by the majority of the lower classes of the metropolises as ‘backdrop’ and instruments working behind the scenes, as ‘naturally inferior material’, ‘natural and human resources’ to be superexploited, for the well-being of the ‘superior people and state’. Colonized peoples are usually forced into the trajectory of ‘scientifically justified’ enslavement (leading up to ethnic cleansing and genocide), ‘civilising’, ‘missionary’, etc. functions of the metropolises. Sometimes, at best, they are treated in the spirit of abstract casual philanthropy, or even with the contemplative attitude of the inquisitive European towards the exotic colony, as picturesque folklore and attractions, as an object for the elite intellectuals of the ‘West’ and the ‘North’ to document from above. In this spirit, the bourgeois sciences of ethnography, ethnology, anthropology are also developed, the acquis of which is regarded by the decision-makers of the ruling class of colonialism as a tool of colonial control.
This is the history of the capitalist and imperialist colonisation of the peoples of Latin America, Africa and Asia. A tragic history of successive conquests of indigenous peoples by European invaders, enslavement, genocide and varied forms of super-exploitation of people and nature. In this predatory relationship, oppression by colonialists led to the extermination of indigenous peoples, combined with the importation of slaves, i.e., a brutal system of colonial super-exploitation, carried out by means of a combined genocide of the peoples of three continents: Latin America, Africa & Asia. When the colonialists exhausted, for example, the ‘material’ of African slaves in Cuba, they imported new ‘material’ from China…
In this way, the emergence, formation and development of nations under capitalism is intertwined from the outset with the conflict between capital and wage labour, but also with the increasing inequality at the regional and global level. This inequality takes on dramatic dimensions with capitalist colonialism, which maintains, subordinates, reproduces and often revives the most brutal forms of exploitation for the primary accumulation and, more generally, for the increasing accumulation of capital. Typical for the brutal conquest of entire continents, and the predatory exploitation of nature and peoples, is the massive development of slave labour (even established in the 1st Constitution of the USA) and the slave trade for centuries, on the basis of which the ‘greatness’ of the most powerful colonial capitalist countries was cemented.
This contradiction takes on unprecedented dimensions during the monopoly stage of capitalism, under imperialism. As Lenin and other Marxist thinkers have scientifically demonstrated, under imperialism exploitation intensifies, deepens and expands on a regional and global scale. This is achieved not only on the basis of colonial occupation, but also on the export of capital, various forms of capital flows, through which a network of exploitative relations is formed for the extraction of surplus value in the form of monopoly super-profits from the dominant monopoly groups and from the parasitic states that are the strongest in terms of capital, a handful of ‘rentier states’ as described by Lenin. The internationalisation and globalisation of the exploitative relations of production constitutes an essential manifestation of the fundamental exploitative capital/labour relation on a world scale, which results in the manifold exploitation by the most powerful monopolies not only of the working class within the imperialist states, but also of the global working class, of all the oppressed peoples, including the local ruling classes.
Racial, national, religious and more general cultural differentiations and conflicts are not linearly linked to class differentiations, nor are they related to them. Their course can be traced to the pre-class stages of history and to those communal remnants which capitalist ‘globalisation’ under imperialism not only did not eliminate but is reproducing, transformed as organic/determining elements of the increasing inequality inherent in capitalism, as distinctive manifestations of the increasingly globalised and now planet-wide field of class conflicts.
Socialist revolutions, the national question and anti-imperialism
The Great October Socialist Revolution and the early socialist revolutions that followed it, imparted radically different characteristics within societies with the revolutionary transformations they initiated. In the USSR, for example, the victory of the revolution in Russia and its colonies sublated the economic, technological, educational, cultural, etc. backwardness of its peoples and nationalities. The material basis for the distinction between ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ nations, the dominant and the dominated, the oppressor and the oppressed, largely ceased to exist. With the cultural revolution and with illiteracy combating, processes of a different type of ethnogenesis were initiated, even for nomadic peoples without a written language, a different type of relation between nations and nationalities, through the pursuit of actual self-determination and unification on a voluntary basis, through the creation and flourishing of national cultures within the framework of socialist construction.
For example, the ancient Russian nationality was the common origin of three nationalities (Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian) which were essentially established as national formations mainly after the revolution, under the USSR. In the USSR certain nationalities (e.g. Turkmen, Kirghiz, etc.) were established as nations, essentially bypassing the capitalist stage of development.
The early socialist revolutions also ignited international waves of anti-colonial, anti-imperialist and national liberation struggles, as a result of which, since the 20th century and especially after WWII, the balance of power and the global political map itself changed to a significant extent.
The crisis of the initially consolidated colonial system of imperialism, the anti-colonial and national liberation struggles that often led to the attainment of various forms and levels of statehood and national independence in many countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa accelerated processes of emergence, formation and consolidation of the national self-consciousness of peoples. Thus, from the various associations of tribes, nationalities and territorial communities, new nationalities, new nations were formed.
In a number of former colonies, ethnogenesis takes place within the struggle for independence, the attainment of which takes place in a territorial area historically shaped by colonial super-exploitation, sharing characteristics that are making them extremely susceptible to attempts of manipulation through the principle of ‘divide and rule’. Communities of tribes and nationalities having different languages, cultures and economic life, result in novel and fragile state formations of territorial and economic integration, political and cultural development.
The founders of the revolutionary theory and practice of the communist movement foresaw the organic links between the class struggle of the working class of the most developed capitalist countries and the anti-colonial, national liberation movements of the less developed and dependent countries and peoples.
The great leaders of the socialist revolutions were distinguished, among other things, by their ability to perceive the tasks of the new era in their organic interconnection, in the light of the global/historical internationalist role of the communists, in the context of the world revolutionary process. It was precisely within the framework of the tasks of the movement that they placed the various manifestations of the national question.
Stalin’s 10 positions on the subject in the chapter of his 1924 book ‘The Foundations of Leninism’ entitled ’The National Question’, are extremely insightful: ‘In solving the national question Leninism proceeds from the following theses:
a) the world is divided into two camps: the camp of a handful of civilised nations, which possess finance capital and exploit the vast majority of the population of the globe; and the camp of the oppressed and exploited peoples in the colonies and dependent countries, which constitute the majority;
b) the colonies and the dependent countries, oppressed and exploited by finance capital, constitute a vast reserve and a very important source of strength for imperialism;
c) the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed peoples in the dependent and colonial countries against imperialism is the only road that leads to their emancipation from oppression and exploitation;
d) the most important colonial and dependent countries have already taken the path of the national liberation movement, which cannot but lead to the crisis of world capitalism;
e) the interests of the proletarian movement in the developed countries and of the national liberation movement in the colonies call for the union of these two forms of the revolutionary movement into a common front against the common enemy, against imperialism;
f) the victory of the working class in the developed countries and the liberation of the oppressed peoples from the yoke of imperialism are impossible without the formation and the consolidation of a common revolutionary front;
g) the formation of a common revolutionary front is impossible unless the proletariat of the oppressor nations renders direct and determined support to the liberation movement of the oppressed peoples against the imperialism of its “own country”, for “no nation can be free if it oppresses other nations” (Engels);
h) this support implies the upholding defence and implementation of the slogan of the right of nations to secession, to independent existence as states;
i) unless this slogan is implemented, the union and collaboration of nations within a single world economic system, which is the material basis for the victory of world socialism, cannot be brought about;
j) this union can only be voluntary, arising on the basis of mutual confidence and fraternal relations among peoples.’
The clarity and relevance of these positions, a century after their formulation, is striking.
A great deal has happened since then. The triumphant successes of the USSR and of the other great socialist revolutions, culminating in the crushing of the Anti-Comintern Axis, as well as the tragedy of the counterrevolutions in the USSR and in the European countries of early socialism.
The national question and anti-imperialism: from WWII to WWIII
We find that today the national question is brought to light with greater intensity and in more complex forms. Early socialism launched qualitatively new forms of ethnogenesis within socialist countries, but also the beginnings of completely unique and historically unprecedented communities of people, such as those of multinational peoples: the Soviet people, the Yugoslav people, the Chinese people, etc.
Early socialism also favoured and launched processes that brought forward a new dynamic and essential component of the world revolutionary process: the anti-imperialist struggle of the peoples, rooted on the claim for national independence and popular sovereignty.
Without exception, all the victorious early socialist revolutions had such characteristics, they were closely linked to the historical necessity of solving the national question. A question which for the overwhelming majority of peoples, capitalism is unable to resolve. On the contrary, the national question is utilised by the imperialist financial oligarchy, the profits of which are based on uneven development, disparities and inequalities as a basis for superexploitation on a global scale, with the extraction of surplus value in the form of monopoly super-profits.
Moreover, the bourgeois counter-revolutions that prevailed in the USSR and in the European countries of early socialism, effectively deployed mass-manipulations on the basis of resurrected or crudely ‘constructed’ and ‘reconstructed’ nations, on the basis of the parasitic ruling classes that emerged from the transformation of the illicit economy/organised crime into the main subject of reaction and the predatory/destructive processes of privatisation, the launching of historically unprecedented forms of primitive capital accumulation, preying on the achievements of the defeated early socialism.
The resurgence of extreme anti-communism, nazism, racism and various forms of fascism in most of the regimes that emerged from these counterrevolutions with the full support of the US-led imperialist aggressor axis is organically linked to the monstrosities of these regressive regimes. Typical are the cases of the dissolution of multinational states through wars or even ‘peacefully’: of Yugoslavia, the USSR and Czechoslovakia.
From the last quarter of the 20th century, some secessionist movements in imperialist countries have also emerged, invoking the national question. However, the class content of such movements is rather specific.
We therefore find that not every national separatist movement is progressive and worthy of solidarity with the communists. The main criterion for communists is the relation of each movement to the strategic perspective of socialist revolution and communism.
From formal to actual independence and sovereignty
The intensification of all reactionary tendencies constitutes an overall escalation of the ongoing WWIII unleashed by the US/NATO/EU imperialist axis across all the fronts, both current and anticipated.
All efforts of direct and indirect (by proxy) attacks by the imperialist axis are driven through unjust, monstrous and murderous machinations of a predatory and reactionary character, sharing references to the national question.
On the contrary, all defensive movements and counter-offensive efforts of the forces of anti-imperialism and socialism are organically linked to the socially just and progressive rise of struggles and demands for national independence and popular sovereignty. Struggles that according to dialectical law can escalate in towards a revolutionary direction. This was and is fundamentally the struggle of the Serbian people. This is also the struggle in the Ukrainian front against imperialism and nazism. The people of Palestine are fighting a life-or-death national liberation struggle against the Zionist regime―the war machine of the Euro-Atlantic axis―with the solidarity of the people of Yemen.
The struggles of the peoples of Latin America, Africa and Asia against the imperialist axis and its local instruments are anti-imperialist, national liberation struggles.
The struggle of the Korean people led by the DPRK for the liberation of the US occupied part of the Korean peninsula is a revolutionary struggle for the reunification of the nation and for socialism. Likewise, the struggle being waged by the people of the PRC for reunification with Taiwan and to resist the US-led axis-fomented separatist ‘movements’ is also in the same vein.
We have pointed out in other texts the character of the escalating WWIII and the powers involved in it.
Here it is necessary to point out an additional specificity of this war on the part of the forces of anti-imperialism and socialism.
In the 20th century, especially after WWII, there were waves of victorious anti-imperialist movements in the former colonies and imperialism-dependent countries. Some of these countries that emerged also attempted to initiate processes of reform in a non-capitalist direction, in cooperation with the USSR and other countries of early socialism. As a result of these struggles, many countries gained at least formally some form of independence and statehood.
These processes also created the ‘Non-Aligned Movement’ under the iconic leadership of Cuba and Fidel Castro. These processes to a considerable extent ended or regressed, especially after the counterrevolutions in the USSR etc. Imperialism has not given up its predatory claims. The presence of hundreds of foreign military bases (occupation troops) of the US and other imperialist countries, successive military interventions, ‘civil wars’ and coups to impose controlled corrupt regimes in the service of imperialism, are on the agenda.
In any case, the achievements of these anti-imperialist movements have not been able to effectively stop the super-exploitation of the peoples. In place of traditional occupation-colonialism came neo-colonialism, with an emphasis on the numerous and varied siphons of super-exploitation concealed under a veil of legitimacy.
Thus, if during the previous conflicts the anti-imperialist movement managed to establish some form of formal independence for many peoples, the ongoing WWIII brings to the surface the possibility and necessity of the transition of anti-imperialism from a formal to an actual and essential attainment of national independence and popular sovereignty for peoples with an average and below-average level of development.
The transition from formal to actual and essential independence and sovereignty is now more necessary than ever. It will be made possible to the extent that the anti-imperialist and socialist forces, by all means (armed, economic, etc.) will effectively cut off the imperialist forces under the US from the regional and global sources of the extraction of monopoly super-profits, by undermining, invalidating, abolishing and ultimately crushing the mechanisms of the constant exsanguination of the peoples, severing the arteries/siphons linking the imperialists to the sources of their predatory parasitism. The processes that are already underway indicate extremely positive trends.
This is the main social and economic content of WWIII from the point of view of the interests of the de facto emerging pole of the anti-imperialist and socialist forces, which also constitutes the main historical justification for their involvement in it.
No other war, including WWII, has posed such a task in such scale. This is the main purpose of the involvement of the national question in this conflict from the point of view of the interests of the pole of the anti-imperialist and socialist forces.
This is the content which imperialism’s mechanisms of mass manipulation and propaganda have every reason to keep as a well-sealed secret from the peoples.
Opportunism working consistently at the service of the imperialist axis
In this deceitful work, the imperialists are today being abetted by the most dangerous opportunism and revisionism in history. The present leadership of the KKE, within the framework of its pharaonic nonsense, the absurdly irrational dogma of the ‘imperialist pyramid’, is striving to undermine the world anti-imperialist and communist movement. It thus reduces every anti-imperialist struggle and every claim for national independence to ‘opportunism’, to ‘marching under foreign flags, at the tail of some capitalist classes’. In the minds of these bureaucrats having ‘the only correct and consistent anti-capitalist line’, ‘all countries are equally imperialist and their capitalist classes practice imperialist policies, corresponding to their position in the pyramid’!
Based on this counter-revolutionary abjection, they proclaim that ‘there is no dependence, only mutual interdependence’ and that on this basis, ‘the national question no longer exists in the world today’!
Question: in the whole world? ‘More or less’, answer the luminaries of opportunism. The Palestinian front today in Gaza is clearly one of the fronts of one and the same imperialist war: the same axis under the USA supports in every way and by all means both the nazi regime in Kiev and the Zionist racist regime in Israel. However, because of the deepest traditions of solidarity of the Greek people with the Palestinian people, in order to avoid mass outcry, the leaders of the KKE are proudly claiming: ‘that’s different! The Palestinian issue is the only unresolved national question today, the only exception to the rule of the pyramid’! Without bothering to explain why and how! This is how they try to keep up some temporary pretences by declaring their solidarity with Palestine, in order to continue their divisive manipulation in the service of imperialism… That is why they denounce the war in Palestine, making sure to stress each and every time in conclusion that ‘the people of Israel are also suffering from the war’!
Simply by claiming that the national question has been almost completely resolved today by imperialism, they are doing an invaluable service to the axis they have been bent on serving in the midst of the war.
In all other aspects, they continue undaunted in their pretence of ‘equal distances’ with emphasis on the condemnation of ‘Russian imperialist aggression’, ‘Chinese imperialism’ and of the DPRK, which they even came to slander both inside and outside the bourgeois parliament as a ‘neoliberal model which features private universities’…
One would think that on the basis of their ‘pyramid’ ramblings, they would seek―in the context of their favourite ahistorical analogy of today with WWI―the defeat of ‘their own’ imperialist coalition in every way and by every means. Of course not! They continue to demand a cease-fire and withdrawal of Russian troops from the ‘occupied’ territories of Ukraine, which is ‘waging a just war’!
Moreover, they declare that ‘in case Greece comes under attack, the KKE will take the lead in the struggle for territorial integrity’! They are thus preparing the ground for even more direct engagement on new fronts in favour of the US/NATO/EU axis, by invoking the question of ‘territorial integrity’ espoused by the subservient to the axis, bourgeois Greek government.
In conclusion
As we have seen, the national question and anti-imperialism are rapidly brought to the surface as WWIII is escalates. The problem of ethnogenesis, of nationalities and nations, is organically linked to the relation between the natural and the social in the logic of history, to the whole framework of the structure and history of human relations with nature and of relations between people, to forms of property, to the established and social classes.
The nation as a concrete historical community emerges, is formed and develops under capitalism and is organically linked to the class structure of the latter. The national question takes on extremely contradictory characteristics under imperialism, since it is organically linked to increasingly uneven development, to transnational and global relations of super-exploitation, to colonialism and neocolonialism, and thus to the ‘weak link’ of the global revolutionary process. The forces of imperialism cannot and are not willing to resolve it.
The early socialist revolutions are organically linked to the national question and its resolution, launching within them different processes of ethnogenesis and internationalism, while they contribute catalytically to the development of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements, especially after WWII.
With the counterrevolutions in the USSR and the other early socialist countries of Europe, multinational socialist states are dismantled, while neo-colonial forms of super-exploitation render any independence most countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America used to have, rather formal.
With the escalating WWIII, in the event of the victory of the forces of the anti-imperialist and socialist pole, it will become necessary and largely possible to move from formal to actual independence and sovereignty of peoples, through the drastic detachment of imperialism from its sources of parasitism. This process will launch a new wave of victorious anti-imperialist and socialist revolutions, at the centre of which the national question is once again placed.
The victory of the forces of anti-imperialism and socialism requires a frontal struggle of all progressive forces, with the communists in the vanguard. A necessary condition for this victory is the exposure, the refutation of the vile ideologies, of all subversive/divisive action and the crushing of opportunism, which is firmly at the service of the imperialist axis.
To achieve these goals, it is necessary to strengthen and develop the World Anti-Imperialist Platform, the most promising revolutionary internationalist project of the last decades.
Defeat to the USA-led imperialist axis!
Struggle for actual independence, sovereignty, prosperity, and development of the peoples!
Victory to the national liberation, anti-imperialist, and socialist forces!
