⧠59. Who expresses the "Will of the Nation"?

The Communist Party recognizes that the nations have the right to self- determination even up to the point of secession; but it considers that the working majority of the nation and not the bourgeoisie embodies the will of the nation. It would, therefore, be more accurate to say that when we speak of recognizing the right of the nations to self-determination, we are referring to the right of the working majority in any nation. As far as the bourgeoisie is concerned, inasmuch as during the period of civil war and proletarian dictatorship we deprive it of civic freedoms, we deprive it also of the right to any voice in the question of national affairs.

What have we to say concerning the right of self-determination and the right of secession in the case of nations at a comparatively low or extremely low level of cultural development? What is to happen to nations which not only have no proletariat, but have not even a bourgeoisie, or if they have it, have it only in an immature form? Consider, for example, the Tunguses, the Kalmucks, or the Buryats, who inhabit Russian territory. What is to be done if these nations demand complete separation from the great civilized nations? Still more, what is to be done if they wish to secede from nations which have realized socialism? Surely to permit such secessions would be to strengthen barbarism at the expense of civilization?

We are of opinion that when socialism has been realized in the more advanced countries of the world, the backward and semi-savage peoples will be perfectly willing to join-the general alliance of the peoples. The imperialist bourgeoisie which has seized its colonial possessions and has annexed them by force has good reason to fear the secession of the colonies. The proletariat, having no desire to plunder the colonies, can procure from them by the exchange of goods such raw materials as are required, and can leave to the natives of backward lands the right to arrange their own internal affairs as they please. The Communist Party, therefore, wishing to put an end for ever to all forms of national oppression and national inequality, voices the demand for the national right of self- determination.

The proletariat of all lands will avail itself of this right, first of all in order to destroy nationalism, and secondly in order to form a voluntary federative league.

When this federative league proves incompetent to establish a world- wide economic system, and when the great majority has been convinced of its inadequacy by actual experience, the time will have come for the creation of one world-wide socialist republic.

If we examine the manner in which the bourgeoisie propounded and solved the problem of nationality (or, as mostly happened, complicated the issue), we see that in the days of its youth the capitalist class dealt with questions of nationality in one fashion, and that in the days of its old age and decay it is dealing with them quite differently.

When the bourgeoisie was an oppressed class, when the aristocracy headed by a king or a tsar held the reins of power, when kings and tsars gave away whole peoples as their daughters' dowries, then the bourgeoisie was not merely accustomed to say fine things about the freedom of the nations, but actually attempted to realize such freedoms in practice - or at least the bourgeoisie of each nation did so as far as its own case was concerned. For example, when Italy was ruled by the Austrian crown, the Italian bourgeoisie headed the movement for national independence, endeavouring to secure the deliverance of Italy from the foreign yoke and its union to form a single state. When Germany was split up into a large number of petty princedoms and was crushed beneath the heel of Napoleon, the German bourgeoisie endeavoured to promote the union of Germany into a single great State, and it fought for the deliverance of the country from the French enslavers. When France, having overthrown the autocracy of Louis XVI, was attacked by the monarchical States of the rest of Europe, the revolutionary French bourgeoisie led the defence of the country and composed the national anthem known as the Marseillaise. In a word, the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations always took the van in the struggle for deliverance; it created a rich national literature; it produced numerous men of genius painters, prose writers, poets, and philosophers. This is what happened in earlier days, when the bourgeoisie was an oppressed class.

Why did the bourgeoisie of oppressed nations strive on behalf of national freedom? If we are to listen to bourgeois poets, if we are to heed the works of bourgeois artists, the motive which animated the bourgeoisie was its hatred of all national oppression, its longing for the freeing and self-determination of every national stock, however small. In truth, when the bourgeoisie in any country fought for the deliverance of that country from a foreign yoke, it was fighting for the establishment of its own bourgeois State; for the power of fleecing the people of its own land without any competition on the part of other exploiters; for the right to the whole of the surplus value created by the town and country workers of their own land.

The history of all capitalist countries bears witness to this truth. When the bourgeoisie is oppressed in conjunction with the working people of its own nation, it clamours for the freedom of the nations in general, and insists upon the wrongfulness of any kind of national enslavement. But as soon as the capitalist class has secured power and has expelled the foreign conquerors be these aristocrats or bourgeois - it does its utmost to subjugate any weak nationality whose subjugation may seem profitable. The revolutionary French bourgeoisie, as represented by Danton, Robespierre, and the other noted figures of the first epoch of the revolution, appealed to all the people of the world on behalf of deliverance from every form of tyranny; the Marseillaise, written by Rouget de l'Isle, and sung by the armies of the revolution, is dear to the hearts of all oppressed peoples. But this same French bourgeoisie, having entered the second .phase of its revolution under the régime of Napoleon, subjugated the peoples of Spain, Italy, Germany, and Austria, to the strains of the aforesaid Marseillaise, and continued to plunder them throughout the Napoleonic wars. When the German bourgeoisie was subject to oppression, such writers as Schiller with his Wilhelm Tell voiced the struggle of the peoples against foreign tyrants. But this same German bourgeoisie under the leadership of Bismarck and Moltke forcibly annexed the French provinces of AlsaceLorraine, seized Schleswig from the Danes, tyrannized over the Poles of Posen, etc. The Italian bourgeoisie, having delivered itself from the yoke of the Austrian aristocracy, was perfectly ready to shoot down the conquered Bedouins of Tripoli, the Albanians and the Dalmatians on the shores of the Adriatic, and the Turks in Anatolia.

Why did these things happen, and why do they happen now? Why has the bourgeoisie invariably voiced the demand for national freedom, and why has it never been able to realize such freedom in actual fact?

The explanation is that every bourgeois State which has freed itself from the yoke of another nation inevitably strives to extend its own dominion. In any capitalist country you please to select, you will find that the bourgeoisie is not content with the exploitation of its own proletariat. The capitalists need raw materials from all the ends of the earth. They therefore strive to acquire colonies, whence, after subjugating the natives, they can without hindrance procure the raw materials they need for their factories. They require markets for the sale of their wares, and they endeavour to find such markets in backward lands, being quite unconcerned as to how this may affect the general population or the still immature bourgeoisies of such countries. They need territories to which they can export surplus capital, so that they may extract profits from these distant workers, and they enslave such territories, disposing of them as freely as they do of their own land. If during the conquest of colonies and during the economic enslavement of backward lands, another powerful bourgeoisie is encountered as a competitor, the dispute is settled by war, and this tends to take the form of such a world war as the one which has just been finished in Europe. The great war did not end the enslavement of the colonies and of the backward lands; if any change has taken place for these, it has only been a change of masters. Furthermore, as the outcome of the war, Germany, Austria, and Bulgaria, which were free countries, have been enslaved. In this manner it has come to pass that the development of the bourgeois system, far from leading to a reduction in the number of the countries which are enslaved by other countries and by the bourgeoisies of these, has led to a positive increase in the number of enslaved lands. The bourgeois dominion has culminated in universal national oppression, for the whole world is now enslaved by the victorious group of capitalist States.