Episode 151: Lenin on the Irish Independence Struggle and National Self-Determination Today
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To help work out the dialectic of national self-determination in the face of Trump’s imperialist aggression against Venezuela, Greenland, Canada, etc., Andrew and Gabriel revisit 1914-16 writings of V.I. Lenin on Ireland’s struggle for independence from England. They discuss Lenin’s response to Rosa Luxemburg, who thought that national self-determination is impossible, and the bases of her thinking. They then turn to Lenin’s defense of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin: his denial that it was a “putsch” and his view that such struggles are “one of the ferments, one of the bacilli,” that help the socialist proletariat to appear on the scene. They also discuss why it was Marx’s custom to “sound out” acquaintances about their attitudes to national self-determination, as a way to test their convictions and intelligence. The following documents are cited during the segment: section 8 of Lenin’s The Right of Nations to Self-Determination; his article on “The Irish Rebellion of 1916”; section 6 of his Critical Remarks on the National Question, regarding “autonomy”; and Raya Dunayevskaya’s comment about Luxemburg on p. 57 of Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation and Marx’s Philosophy of In the episode’s current-events segment, the co-hosts discuss the fightback against the Trump regime’s aggression against Greenland and Minneapolis, as two facets of one struggle. Radio Free Humanity is a podcast covering news, politics and philosophy from a Marxist-Humanist perspective. It is co-hosted by Gabriel Donnelly and Andrew Kliman. We intend to release new episodes every two weeks. Radio Free Humanity is sponsored by MHI, but the views expressed by the hosts and guests of Radio Free Humanity are their own. They do not necessarily reflect the views and positions of MHI. We welcome and encourage listeners’ comments, posted on this episode’s page. |
I thought it was very interesting to hear Andrew and Gabriel make sense of the following line from Dunayevskaya’s Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution (RLWLMPR):
First, it is refreshing to hear thinkers, especially one so steeped in their tradition like Andrew, say “I could never make sense of this.” I appreciate these reminders that we are always learning and no one has all “the answers.”
More to the point, however, I agree with the conclusions the co-hosts came to on this point and wanted to add to this part of the discussion. In particular, I want to talk about the significance of this kind of ambivalence Dunayevskaya is drawing attention to in Luxemburg’s thinking, positions, and activity.
On page 153 of RLWLMPR, Dunayevskaya uses a different term to describe Luxemburg’s thinking, positions, and activity—“sharp dualism.” As far as I understand, what Dunayevskaya meant when she used this term was that Rosa Luxemburg had contradictory ideas that, in Hegel’s words, lived in “peaceful coexistence” because these ideas could come “before consciousness without being in contact.” By keeping two contradictory ideas from coming into contact, she could be a critic of imperialism and committed internationalist activist on one hand while saying that national self-determination was impossible on the other. For the same reason, she could be a theorist of spontaneity on one hand and a committed defender of the party to lead on the other.
Lenin picked up on this kind of thing, too. In his “The Junuis Pamphlet,” Lenin says that the author—who we know to be Luxemburg—“applied Marxian dialectics only halfway.” By this, he meat that Luxemburg was “taking one step on the right road and immediately deviating from it.” I think Andrew and Gabriel were right to identify that the moment where Luxemburg deviates from “Marxian dialectics,” or, in more Hegelian terms, Absolute Method, is when she substitutes something else (like the Party) for the self-developing subject (the proletariat, national minorities, women, etc.).
In my view, the ambivalence, the dualism, the halfway dialectics, the deviations from Absolute Method are what the Marxist movement has to overcome if we ever want to be a real force of revolution again. I mean we have people on the so-called “anti-imperialist” left explicitly opposing the right of nations self-determination, i.e., to secede from imperialist powers and establish their own states. We have people defending China as a socialist country while admitting the law of value—what distinguishes capitalist production from any other mode of production—operates in the Chinese economy. We have people professing their commitment to the self-emancipation of the working class while continuing to build organizations that aim to tell workers what to do and lend support to regimes all over the world that violently supress workers’ movements.
I wanted to write: “It’s insanity!” And it is. But, again, we have to do more than psychologize.
The real problem is that, for whatever reasons, the Marxist movement has yet to grasp “Marxian dialectics,” that is, see workers (and other forces of revolution) as subject rather than object. Until we do, in my opinion, we’ll continue moving backwards, continuing becoming less relevant, less powerful, etc.