Anarchism and Marxism - Nationalism and Relationships With Indigenous Peoples and Stateless Nations

Nationalism and Relationships With Indigenous Peoples and Stateless Nations

Anarchism and Marxism differ in their relationships with Indigenous peoples and national minorities. The classical Anarchist position was that the coming revolution would wipe away all distinctions of nationality, since nationality is socially constructed, that the proletariat has no "nation", and that the natural form for socialism was internationalism. This remained the established position of the entire anti-capitalist left up until the early 1900s and still holds considerable sway in both anarchist and Marxist circles. Marxists acknowledge boundaries and development of the nation state.

During the build-up to the Russian revolution, however, Lenin and the Bolsheviks found it expedient to promise independence to the various indigenous non-Russian national minorities, notably the Ukrainians and the Poles, in return for their support against the Czarist empire. Whilst some Bolsheviks continued to support this position, the dominant Bolshevik faction grouped around Lenin in Moscow first drove the National Communists underground and the liquidating them in 1928. Subsequently all nationalist movements throughout the USSR were brutally crushed by Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and all their successors until the collapse of the USSR as a political unit. In the run-up to World War II Russia's foreign policy centered around the idea of National Bolshevism, through which the Bolshevik political elite in Russia sought to instigate and support communist-nationalist revolutions around the world, most notably in Hungary and Germany, and then absorb the newly independent areas into a Soviet commonwealth—a goal that was achieved after World War II with the Warsaw Pact. Elements of this persisted in Soviet foreign policy throughout the cold war and helped motivate support of nationalist and anti-imperialist movements throughout the third world. Aid by Russia to the Chinese Communist Party during the Chinese revolution was driven by the same motivation, but once in power Mao refused to allow the USSR to control Chinese policy, leading to a break with Stalin that culminated in a brief war between the two powers. The same process would later play out in the relationship between Communist rulers in China and Vietnam.

During the Chinese revolution a parallel process occurred as Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party first promised independence and self-determination to all of China's many stateless nations, and then not only refused to deliver once the CCP's grip on power was solidified but actually invaded and annexed Tibet, which he regarded as a renegade province. Every successive Communist government throughout the world has followed this same pattern of first promising indigenous national minorities self-determination in order to gain their support and then actively opposing that self-determination once in power. In a nutshell, the general policy of Marxist governments from Lenin on has been to support revolution nationalism and the rights of indigenous groups in theory and to oppose it in practice. Most recently, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua were accused of carrying out campaigns of ethnic cleansing against indigenous peoples in order to seize their land.

Ward Churchill has gone so far as to argue in his essay on Marxism and Indigenism that Marxism is inherently imperialist and racist in effect, if not in intent, because it is based on the idea of historical progress and industrialization as inevitable, and sees industrial proletarian-based societies as more "advanced" than other societies (particularly indigenous societies). Other scholars argue that the conflict has to do with the demands of running a State structure and argue that if the Bolsheviks had come to power in Poland (for example) instead of Russia they would have had to become Polish nationalists and would have bitterly opposed Russian attempts to dominate Poland. Seizing the Russian State, however, meant that they had to defend the interests of that State; and the rights of stateless nations thus became anathema.

The position of Anarchism is somewhat the reverse. Most Anarchists, both historically and up to the present day, see borders and national divisions as detrimental and envision a world in which distinctions of race and ethnicity fade and disappear over time as the ideal. In practice, however, Anarchism is based on small-scale systems of self-determination, local self-governance, and mutual aid that fulfill the desire of national minorities for self-determination on a defacto basis; and has thus been historically compatible with anti-state forms of nationalism. The most notable collaboration, of course, being the movements for self-rule by the Catalans and Basques in Spain which found expression under the banner of the anarchist CNT during the Spanish Civil War. More recently there has been an attempt at an explicit fusion of Anarchism and native-American political traditions manifested in the modern Indigenist movement. Anti-State nationalist organizations that explicitly describe their politics as Anarchist currently exist in Ireland and Brittany. Many members of the modern American Indian Movement also consider themselves Anarchists.