Rosa Luxemburg and the National Problem:
The Similarity of Luxemburg’s Theory
to “Austrian Marxism”

Writen by Hiroyoshi Hayashi (1993)
Translated by Roy West

8. Luxemburg Begins to “Select” or Screen Nations

Next Luxemburg engages in an attempt to distinguish between “nations” where self-determination is possible and those “nations” lacking the necessary requirements for this. She says that Poland has such requirements, but Lithuania or the Ukraine do not. But according to what basis or standard does Luxemburg make her “selection”?

As we have already seen, Luxemburg starts from the perfectly justified view that modern nationalism can only exist along with capitalistic development. But in her case this has a particular content. She positions this as a question of the development of large cities and the intelligentsia that are concentrated there. While quoting Kautsky, she goes so far as to equate the present-day nation with the intelligentsia, and argues that only the formation of the intelligentsia is seen as the “foundation” for national life. In this way, in terms of nationality and its formation, she respects the bourgeoisie, or more specifically “the modern bourgeois intelligentsia, literary life, journalism, learning, and art.” (p. 265) Thus, Luxemburg was strongly opposed to the view that the peasants were the starting point of the nation or nationality:

The emphasis on the peasant element in connection with the fate of nationality is correct in so far as the quite passive preservation of national peculiarities in the ethnic group is concerned: speech, mores, dress, and also, usually in close connection with this, a certain religion. (pp. 263-4)

In other words, the nationality of the peasants contained nothing positive, and was merely connected to customs and “conservatism” of life. This only has meaning in terms of protecting or defending against other nationalities, but has no positive content of its own, and cannot play an important role in modern politico-social life, and is therefore not a manifestation of modern nationalism.

However, a national culture preserved in this traditional-peasant manner is incapable of playing the role of an active element in contemporary political-social life, precisely because it is entirely a product of tradition, is rooted in past conditions, because?to use the words of Marx?the peasant class stands in today’s bourgeois society outside of culture, constituting rather a “piece of barbarism” surviving in that culture. The peasant, as a national “outpost,” is always and a priori a culture of social barbarism, a basis of political reaction, doomed by historical evolution. (p. 264)

She thus concludes that the no serious national movement is possible upon the foundation of the peasantry. This is similar to the extreme arguments of the Mensheviks or Trotsky (footnote).

According to Luxemburg’s view, the intelligentsia, not the peasantry, lie at the core of the concept of nation. For her, the development of the national contradictions and national “aspirations” is only possible when the urban intelligentsia is formed from capitalist development and begins to advance the national movement.

What she calls “bourgeois nationalism” is a strange thing. We think that Luxemburg’s view is very much bourgeois nationalism, but she says that the view that values the nationalism of the peasants is in fact “bourgeois nationalism,” and that it is not “history” but just “utopian ideology.” According to this view, there is an important obstacle that prevents national autonomy from being “suitable” for some nations. That is, nationalities lacking a bourgeois intelligentsia and its culture cannot achieve the “national autonomy” or “self-government” that Luxemburg beautifies.

On the basis of the above dogma, Luxemburg argues that of all the nations within the Russian empire, “domestic self-government” or “national self-government” is only suitable in Poland?i.e. all of the other nations including Lithuania, Ukraine, White Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and the Jews do not have this right at all.

Thus, local autonomy in the sense of the self-government of a certain nationality territory is only possible where the respective nationality possesses its own bourgeois development, urban life, intelligentsia, its own literary and scholarly life. The Congress Kingdom demonstrates all these conditions. Its population is nationally homogenous. (p. 265)

In this fashion, not only does she reject “national self-determination” within the Russian empire, but she firmly denies these nationalities even “national self-government” or “national autonomy.”

First she talks about how suitable “national autonomy” is for Poland, since within the Russian empire the Poles have a “decisive preponderance over other nationalities” within its territory with the exception of the Suwalki gubernia where Lithuanians are the majority. Luxemburg adds that although there are Germans and Jews concentrated in the large cities, they do not form an un-Polish intelligentsia, but rather “acts in an exactly, leading to the assimilation of the Jewish bourgeoisie.” (p. 267) Therefore, there is no need to consider them. For example, in the case of the Jews, she says that although they are “linked by language, tradition, and psychology” they do not possess a “definite territory”, and therefore “national autonomy” would not be appropriate. Within the Russian empire, the Jewish population shares the economic, political and spiritual interests of particular groups in the society, but she says that they do not have “specifically Jewish capitalist interests”, and capitalist development leads to the assimilation with Polish people. Certainly the Jewish people are said to have national distinctiveness based on the “socially backward petite bourgeoisie, on small production, small trade, small-town life”, just as the distinctiveness of the Lithuanians or Byelorussians is “based on the backward peasant people.” (p. 267)

In the view of the above, the national distinctness of the Jews, which is supposed to be the basis of the nonterritorial Jewish autonomy, is manifested not in the form of metropolitan bourgeois culture, but in the form of “developing Jewish culture” at the initiative of a handful of Yiddish publicists and translators cannot be taken seriously. The only framework is the Social Democratic movement of the Russian proletariat which, because of its nature, can best replace the historical lack of bourgeois national culture of the Jews, since it is itself a phase of genuinely international and proletarian culture. (p. 267-8)

In short, she sees the Jews as having no national distinctiveness, and views their national movement as reactionary and lacking any territorial basis, so she sees no need at all for the protection of their “national autonomy”. Moreover, the lack of necessity for “national autonomy” is not limited to the Jews, but also includes the “complex” Lithuanian people. In the case of the latter, the case for national independence or the “broadest autonomy” within the Russian empire is seen as inappropriate since it is only based on “the existence of a certain territory inhabited by a population of distinct nationality. That is, within the territory known as Lithuania, the Lithunains constitute only about 20% of the population, and only in the Suwalki Gubernia do the make up more than 50% of the population. She concludes that Lithuania lacks the economic, social and cultural elements necessary for autonomy. This conclusion is also based on the fact that the Lithuanians were overwhelmingly peasants.

Luxemburg also says that the conditions for self-determination or autonomy do not exist in Byelorussia because the territory is inhabited by “an exclusively rural, agrarian element.” (p. 271) The cultural and economic level there is extremely low, and illiteracy is widespread.

The complete lack of a Byelorussian bourgeoisie, an urban intelligentsia, and an independent scholarly and literary life in the Byelorussian language, renders the idea of a national Byelorussian autonomy simply impractical. (Ibid.)

In this way, she says that it would be impossible for Lithuania or Byelorussia to bear the functions of domestic autonomy because they lack the “cultural requirements.” Only Poland, then, possesses the required “urban and intellectual elements.” Therefore, Lithuania and Byelorussia could only exist as an extension or part of the realm of Poland.

Luxemburg applies the same argument, repeatedly, to discuss the central Asian areas of Russia. For example, she says that it is immediately clear the nationalities in the Caucasus such as the Armenians, Georgians, Tartars, etc., represent an intermixture of nationality and language, and the population is overwhelmingly peasant. Moreover, these territories themselves include a number of other minority nations?often still stuck in the stage of nomadic pastoralism. Therefore, “national autonomy” is also seen as an impossibility in these territories.

Luxemburg only recognizes “national autonomy” or “domestic self-government” in the case of the Polish people, but what are the national demands that the other nationalities should be content with? She calls for “freedom and equal rights for education, religion, and residency” for nationalities within the Russian empire or the special Polish autonomous zone. In the case of area of the Caucasus, she proposes the following:

Just as in Lithuania, the only method of settling the nationality question in the Caucasus, in the democratic spirit, securing to all nationalities freedom of cultural existence without any among them dominating the remaining ones, and at the same time meeting the recognized need for modern development, is to disregard ethnographic boundaries, and to introduce broad local self-government?communal, urban, district, and provincial?without a definite nationality character, that is, giving no privileges to any nationality. Only such self-government will make it possible to unite various nationalities to jointly take care of the local economic and social interests, and on the other hand, to take into consideration in a natural way the different proportions of the nationalities in each country and each commune.

Communal, district, provincial self-government will make it possible for each nationality, by means of a majority decision in the organs of local administration, to establish its schools and cultural institutions in those districts or communes where it possesses numerical preponderance. At the same time a separate, empire-wide, linguistic law guarding the interests of the minority can establish a norm in virtue of which national minorities, beginning with a certain numerical minimum, can constitute a basis for the compulsory founding of schools in their national languages in the commune, district, or province; and their language can be established in local public and administrative institutions, courts, etc., at the side of the language of the preponderant nationality (the official language). Such a solution would be workable, if indeed any solution is possible within the framework of capitalism, and given the historical conditions. This solution would combine the general principle of local self-government with special legislative measures to guarantee cultural development and equality of rights of the nationalities through their close cooperation, and not their mutual separation by barriers of national autonomy. (pp. 279-80)

Luxemburg argues that rather than national autonomy, the end result would go against liberty and democracy. In other words, she thinks that in areas where modern development has not given the economic interests in a given territory a certain amount of independence or led to the formation of an independent bourgeois culture, or in cases where the nationalities are mixed in an area and cannot be easily distinguished, then rather than regional autonomy, the only policy which can ease or reduce conflict between nations is to combine equal civil rights and special rights for languages within a given state or wide regional autonomy area. This policy is for the sake of the oppressed nations which it seeks to maintain.

This last argument of Luxemburg’s does have some rational content in terms of being free of the dogma of the conflict between “regional autonomy” and “territorial autonomy.” In other words, the idea that the best of bourgeois democracy should also be thoroughly democratic in terms of the national problem. In this case, not only should no national discrimination be allowed, but thorough consideration should also be given to national equality and equal rights (of course, this is completely different from recognizing the special rights of a particular nation. Recently petty bourgeois nationalists have confused national equality and equal rights with the defense of particular national rights!)

Putting this question aside, Luxemburg makes a distinction between those nations for which “domestic self-government” or “national autonomy” is possible, and those for which it is impossible. The former (the Polish nation) are to be given a certain amount of administrative and legal autonomy, while the latter (other nations such as Lithuania, Georgia, etc.) are to be given as many democratic rights as possible, i.e. their “cultural” national rights are to be protected.

But it is completely arbitrary to make a distinction between nations for which “domestic self-government” is possible and those for which it is not. The question of whether the members of a nation are mainly peasants or whether the urban intelligentsia has yet to be formed, is irrelevant to “nationality” and its formation. It is naturally possible for a nation or nationalism to be based upon the peasantry, and this cannot necessarily be called reactionary as the history of the 20^th century national movement in Asia demonstrates. Luxemburg is not aware that the peasants are also “bourgeois” in a certain sense, i.e. a “radical bourgeoisie”. She doesn’t seem to notice that her explanation is identical to that of the imperialists who do not recognize the independence of the colonies with the excuse that the colonial nations are culturally backward, do not have the intelligentsia necessary to govern, or that they do not possess such a capability. What right does Luxemburg have to say that the Lithuanians do not have the requirements to demand national autonomy or self-government? As a right, this has to be recognized for the Lithuanians or the Georgians, etc. Of course, however, Luxemburg has the right to support or oppose the exercise of this right, just the same as everyone else.

Luxemburg goes on to say that “Polish self-government” should be a programmatic demand of the proletariat. At the same time as she firmly says that national self-determination should not be the slogan of the working class or a workers’ party, on the other she emphasizes the slogan of “national autonomy.” She says that the demand for national self-determination amounts to welcoming or tailing after nationalism, whereas “national self-government” is an example of internationalism. But is this truly the case?

Luxemburg recognizes that the slogan of national self-governance is also the slogan of the Polish bourgeoisie. She correctly defines this, as a bourgeois slogan, as an essential tool of class rule. But she believes that workers can propose this slogan from a “different angle” from the bourgeoisie. She says that throughout the world the Social Democratic Parties seek “bourgeois freedom” and the “democratic system” not because they think that this will eliminate economic oppression, but because they think that this will facilitate the organization and enlightenment of the proletariat, and lead to their inevitable victory. She argues that national autonomy, in the same way, will be desirable for the Polish working class because it is a “progressive form of bourgeois rule” that national and cultural freedom, while serving the interests of the ruling class, at the same time can be an effective weapon in the class resistance of the proletariat.

However, if the democratic system has significance for the struggles of the working class, then it should be clear that through national self-determination this takes on greater meaning. Why is there a need here (i.e. in the case of Poland) to raise the relatively limited slogan of national self-governance instead of national self determination. In a sense, this represents submission or compromise with Russian imperialism. At any rate, it is strange that Luxemburg emphasizes national self-government while opposing national self-determination. This reveals the essential limitation or drawback of Luxemburg as a proletarian revolutionary.

When Luxemburg makes the following statement, we are able to understand somewhat why she opposes self-determination while dwelling on self-government. She says that “national self-government” can make a contribution to the expansion of the class struggle, and that the foundation of the system of autonomy is more or less democratic and progressive. This is basically an example of petty bourgeois fantasies vis-a-vis the narrow “national autonomy.” Since the foundation of regional government?both territorially and politically?is narrow, it appears to be more democratic by permitting the citizens to participate more directly. For this reason, this is a political setting that has a certain charm for petty bourgeois socialists, and Luxemburg seems to share this fantasy. For this reason, she sings the praises of the system of autonomy, and spouts meaningless sayings such as her idea that that this regional self-government must also seek to ensure the true people’s educational system for all of the working masses, not just for the Polish nationality.

Rosa Luxemburg and the National Problem: Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Abstract Denial of Nationalism
3. Are the National Tasks Bourgeois Tasks?
4. The Theory of the “Nation-State” and the Class Interests of the Workers
5. The “National Self-Determination” of Poland
6. Centralized Power and Regional Autonomy
7. Luxemburg’s Concept of Nation
8. Luxemburg Begins to “Select” or Screen Nations
9. National Cultural Autonomy and National Self-Determination