The Nation in the History of Marxian Thought: The Concept of Nations with History and Nations without History

144 Pages·1976·5.31 MB·English

by  Charles C. Herod (auth.)

THE NATION IN THE HISTORY OF
MARXIAN THOUGHT
THE NATION IN THE HISTORY
OF MARXIAN THOUGHT
THE CONCEPT OF NATIONS WITH HISTORY
AND NATIONS WITHOUT HISTORY
by
CHARLESC. HEROD
State University ot New York at Plattsburgh
•
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.1976
To
Robert A. Kann
Teacher and Friend
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 1976
Originally published by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands in 1976
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
ISBN 978-94-017-4575-8 ISBN 978-94-017-4754-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-4754-7
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
I
CHAPTER I: ORIGIN OF THE THEORY OF NATIONS WITH HISTORY
AND NATIONS WITHOUT HISTORY 6
A. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as editors of the Neue
Rheinische Zeitung 6
B. Discussion of the concept of nations with history and
nations without history in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung 17
C. Marx and Engels attitude towards small Slavic national
groups after the demise of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung 33
CHAPTER II: MARXIST THEORISTS ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE
CONCEPT OF NATIONS WITH HISTORY AND NATIONS WITHOUT
HISTORY 39
A. The reappearance in socialist literature of the concept
of nations with history and nations without history at
the end of the 19th century 39
B. Karl Kautsky, Otto Bauer and their exchange of views 42
C. Conflict within German social democratic party that
brought the discussion of the concept of nations with
history and nations without history to the fore in 1915 66
D. Discussion of Rosa Luxemburg's theories for the re-
nascence of the Polish nation 77
E. Comparative comments on the views of Otto Bauer and
Rosa Luxemburg in their historical setting 90
VI TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER III: ATTITUDE OF 20TH CENTURY MARXISTS TOWARDS
QUESTION OF THE RIGHT OF NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION
FOR SMALL NATIONAL GROUPS 100
A. The right of national self-determination championed by
international social democracy 100
CHAPTER IV: CONCLUSION 120
Bibliography 130
Index 137
INTRODUCTION
This study is based upon the concept of nations with history and nations
without history which was advanced in 1848/1849 in the pages of the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung, a Cologne based German newspaper under
the editorship of Karl Marx. This theory is presented in this study as
a model of opposites ; historic nations and non-historic nations, respec
tively revolutionary nations and counter-revolutionary national groups
which Engels and Marx associated with the philosophy of Hegel. As
Marx and Engels saw it, Hegel had taught that nature and history
abounded in opposites, and this was believed to be the essence of his
dialectic. Marx liked this dialectic better than anything else in Hegel's
thought and modified it to fit his own economic theory of history. In
reality, however, there are no categories of opposites; certainly not in
nature; no two colors are opposites; nor are any two times of the day,
indeed nothing temporal, nothing living, nothing that is in process of
becoming.! It is only in human understanding that opposites are intro
duced. In the history of ideas what has been a misunderstanding of
Hegel's teachings has exerted a greater influence upon subsequent
generations than Hegel's philosophy as he himself understood it.
With Marx's development of the materialistic concept of history, the
Volksgeist (Spirit of the Age), so pronounced in Hegel's work lost
ground rapidly; first, because it was difficult to understand and second,
because its mastery was hardly rewarding to anyone save scholars and
philosophers.
Marx and the entire German Left came to see the world, in terms of
opposites in strenuous conflict in which there was no room for middle
ground compromise. It was simply whoever is not for me is against me;
whoever is not revolutionary is counter-revolutionary. It was within
this rigid frame that Marx and Engels interpreted the events in France
1 Walter Kaufmann, "Dualistic Thinking - from Mani to New Left," pp. 3-7, University,
A Princeton Quarterly, Spring, 1970, Nr. 44. Princeton University Press, p. 32.
2 INTRODUCTION
and central Europe in 1848/1849 and on into the second half of the
19th century.
When in 1848/1849 Engels presented to the readers of the Neue
Rheinische Zeitung the political conflicts in the Germanies and Austria
within the general frame of the old dialectic of Hegel, he provided a
complete system through which the German Left could justify its
revolutionary stance. At the same time a further domination of the
small Slavic national groups by the German bourgeoisie and the Polish
and Hungarian noble classes, their allies, could be justified. Finally a
dominant position for German Social Democracy when and if it came
to power in the projected Greater Germany could be indicated. Within
the frame of the dialectic of Hegel as presented by Engels, the old
feudal classes in the Germanies and Austria were understood to have
already played out their role on the stage of history and were in the
process of being replaced by the proletariat during the revolution which
was then expected by German Social Democracy in the very near future.
The small national groups of Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs,
Rumanians and Ruthenians were considered to be of no political im
portance. They were peoples destined to remain as ruins of former
nations or disappear through absorption by more vigorous and more
progressive nations. The political and social needs of these groups there
fore could safely be ignored. Also within the frame of the dialectic of
Hegel, the presence of the small national groups furnished a ready
excuse for the failure of the revolutions. These small groups were pre
sented as furnishing the much needed recruits for the armies of the
historic ruling classes, and it was charged that they thereby contributed
significantly to the defeat of the revolution. These arguments were
associated with Hegel's dialectic by Marx and Engels, no doubt in order
to back up their own materialistic conception of history and their own
revolutionary ideas with authority, respectability and popularity, not
only among the German Left but among German intellectuals in
general. Hegel's dialectic of the Spirit of the Age historically had flat
tered the German nation. Even though only educated Germans could
understand Hegel's arguments, all Germans could still take pride in
his designation of the German Spirit as the Spirit of the New World,
and that the destiny of the German peoples was to be the bearers of
the Christian principles.2
As far as this writer can determine, Engel's arguments against the
2 George William, F. Hegel, Vorlesungen uber die Philosophie der Geschichte. Samtliche
Werke, Eliter Band, Verlag Frommann, Stuttgart, 1949, p. 437.
INTRODUCTION 3
small Slavic national groups in central and east-central Europe merely
confirmed German and Austrian groups in their already existing anti
Slav prejudices. His arguments were after all laudatory of German and
Austrian cultural, economic and political developments throughout
central and east central Europe which reinforced German beliefs in
their natural superiority over central and east central European Slavic
nations.
On the other hand, the intense ridicule and open hostility towards
the small national Slavic groups of the Habsburg Monarchy accentuated
an expression of nationalism among their young intellectuals which
was without doubt an expression of wounded pride. It was also easier
for these weak national groups, the most obvious victims of the down
ward pressures of the German bourgeoisie and of the Magyar and
Polish upper social classes to clutch the ideas of these ruling groups,
hoping to appropriate and reshape them for use by their own national
groups, rather than to resist them. So in the end, the non-historic na
tions copied the historic nations; they declared that they too were
historic nations, and to prove it, discovered their ancient history,
established the continuity of their ancient traditions, recreated their
half-forgotten languages, remembered their old literature and with the aid
of ingenious statistics retraced on the map of central Europe generous
but not always strictly accurate frontiers of the past.3 This activity,on
the part of the small national groups of the Habsburg Monarchy, has
often been described as the awakening of the non-historic peoples.
The multi-national Habsburg Monarchy was saved from the threat
of dismemberment in r848/r849 partly due to the feuds and rivalries
between the various national groups that prevented the organization
and operation of a unified revolutionary strategy. The smaller national
groups, principally Slavic, sought to free themselves from the influence
of the dominant nations within the Monarchy, primarily the Germans,
in regard to all national groups, secondly in regard to most, the Magyars
and Poles. The privileged national groups because of their superior
economic and political positions assumed that they could safely ignore
the desires of the smaller national groups. Realizing the hopelessness
of this many-sided conflict at that time, the Slavic national groups of
the Habsburg Monarchy accepted for the time being the notion that
their interest rested with a stable Habsburg Monarchy. Accordingly,
they offered their political and military support to the Monarchy
a H. Trevor-Roper, Jewish and Other Nationalism, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London,
England, 1962, p. I:Z.
4 INTRODUCTION
against those Austro-Germans who wanted to take Cisleithan Aus
tria into a greater Germany and against the Magyars who wanted to
detach Hungary from the Monarchy and establish their multi-national
land as a nation state in central Europe. The Ruthenians for the same
reasons supported the Empire against the Poles - only the Italians,
whether conservative or liberal, maintained by and large an anti. .
Habsburg position.
As will be discussed in the following study in some depth, this generally
unclear stituation in central Europe was the background of a series of
disparaging attacks on Austrian Slavs in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
in 1848/1849 and later in New York in the New York Daily Tribune,
by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Many of the more bitter articles
were written by Engels, who had a tendency to frequently express
himself on the aspirations and ambitions of smaller nations with greater
severity than Marx. However, on the issue of the emergence of small
nations to statehood the two men seemed to be in substantial agree
ment.
In numerous essays in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, in which Engels
wrote about Austro-Slav national groups, he used the term "nations
without history," in order to describe them. Within the scope of this
term, Engels included those people who in their past did not have,
what Engels thought was, the ability to develop strong state systems;
therefore, as it appeared to him, they were incapable of attaining
national independence at any time in the future. As such people without
history Engels considered most of the Slavic national groups of Austria
and Hungary with the exception of the Poles; that is to say, the Czechs,
Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, and Ruthenians as well as the Aus
trian and Hungarian Rumanians, who were, of course, not Slavic. The
term non-historic nations as it was initially used in the Neue Rheinische
Zeitung in 1848/1849 was pejorative in the sense that the small Slav
national groups within central Europe were considered to be less vigor
ous and less developed culturally and politically than the Germans,
Poles, Italians and Magyars.
The main emphasis of this study is to investigate and discuss the
concept of historic and non-historic nations as formulated by Friedrich
Engels. In order to see whether or not the concept was considered by
the subsequent Socialist Parties of Germany, Austria and Russia to be
a valid one for categorizing the peoples of south-central and east
central Europe, the work of significant Marxist theorists will be re
VIewed. All of them either discussed the concept and/or used it in their