Joseph Stalin's Marxism and the National Question: An Informal Review

My friend Ènziramire and I were chatting about how hard it is to find a based Stalin who, at some point, must have existed in history. Was he a four-dimensional entity who bled into our reality at certain key points of time, but never at once? Is he a myth of Stalinist great-man theory? Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR wasn’t exactly flattering, but he was basically retired by that point (and, as my partner remarked once, it might as well could have been written by a committee and published under his name). So, I went back in time and read his 1913 treatise called Marxism and the National Question.

Here’s how it goes: “Nations totally have the right to self-determination, guys… but:”

• Nationalist revolutions are almost always going to be bourgeois, especially since they are most often between a national and/or petite bourgeoisie (or peasantry) and an international big bourgeoisie. They’re ultimately about market share.
• Dividing workers’ parties along national lines splits their interest and generates undue antagonism rather than class solidarity between workers, when it would be to their common benefit to pursue socialism and unite against the bourgeoisie.
• Cultural-national autonomy (defining nations as cultures and formally representing them and their populations as such in the government, regardless of location) is a poor solution to the “national question” because what constitutes a member of a certain culture is quite subjective and multifaceted, such that as a government policy it’s nonsensical and unfeasible.
• Regional autonomy under a representative government which protects the rights of nations (to speak their language, to produce its own culture) is preferable over trying to establish a state for each nation or to cultural-national autonomy.

Was that really Stalin that I just read? Or Bordiga?

I didn’t think it was super remarkable at a glance, although I did think his critique of nationalism and cultural-national autonomy as bourgeois (and anti-proletariat) was apt if, at this point, well-trodden (though ironic given how many red nationalist revolutions have since occurred under the banner of so-called Marxism-Leninism). My friend John B. from the Retired Adventurer reminded me, though, that this was radical at the time, and it was responsible for the USSR’s approach of being a multinational state aiming towards the preservation and representation of nations in government and culture.

It’s funny because Stalin criticizes “(cultural) national autonomy” in the same way that I think others criticize self-determination of nations, which is even more funny when his proposed solution to the national problem is regional autonomy since cultural autonomy is nonsensical and unfeasible the more you think about it. The regional and federal states need to protect nations as linguistic and cultural identities within themselves rather than trying to assimilate them, but also while having equal rights in their region. Like, yeah!

This has implications for socialist government which are reflected in the USSR’s structure as well as in our modern political struggles relating to national oppression. John B., whom I mentioned earlier, told me that Soviet multinationalism took the form of korenizatsiia (indigenization) where the state promoted national minorities in local governments and empowered these groups at large with resources to realize their own culture through anthropological research (dictionaries!) as well as through cultural production. This feels much more appealing than the online leftist idea that we should endlessly differentiate into infinitely small and independent people groups. Besides being unfeasible, it is not a route for meaningful improvement in people’s lives. Seeing what the USSR accomplished, and for what reasons, gives me hope for what can actually be done.

This also puts Sakai's Settlers in an interesting, more advanced (if unrealized?) light, since he views nations, at least in a settler ecosystem, as abstractions of classes rather than as nations in themselves (while criticizing the notion that settler workers have class solidarity with colonized workers as a result). To clarify, this does not necessarily contradict Stalin’s point generally, but I do think it means we should closely investigate why nations (i.e., groups of people considered as such) emerge and how they operate. That being said, it does seem to confirm my hunch that Settlers is weakest when it falls to nationalist rhetoric, instead of fully realizing settler colonialism and its parties as color-coded class struggle (at least in the United States). Stalin and Sakai are right, if the south e.g. was politically autonomous and representative, it would be a lot more representative and protective of Black and Latin people.

Overall, for Stalin, self-determination does not necessarily mean political independence as a nation-state and can mean, even better, equal protections for a people group within a multinational state which can guarantee economic, political, and social equity. This also means that the multinational state cannot just call itself one, but it needs to be actually representative of the nations (and other groups) it contains. My ultimate gripe is that the "right of nations to self-determination" is needlessly vague considering the caveats that Stalin outlines, and the language of  both rights and democracy leans into bourgeois morality.

One more thing: I also just read Black Against Empire which is about the political development of the Black Panther Party. Definitely a hefty book, but it's super worth the read.