Marx and Engels on Nationalism and National Identity: A Reappraisal

John Elster , Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 17.

See. for example, Vendulka Kuhàtkovà and Albert Cruickshank , Marxism and International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1985) and also their Marxism-Leninism and International Relations (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1980).

This is largely a legacy of Kenneth N. Waltz's influential interpretation of Marx in Man, the State and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959).

See Walker Connor , The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press , 1984), pp. 7-8; Vendulka Kubalkova and Albert Cruickshank , Marxism-Leninism and International Relations , op. cit, p. 48; Ronaldo Munck , The Difficult Dialogue: Marxism and Nationalism (London : Zed Books, 1986), p. 22.

See, for example, Engels' letter to Borgius in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Letters (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1977). p. 101.

See Vendulka Kubàlkovà and Albert Cruickshank , Marxism and International Relations , op. cit, p. 57.

See J.L. Talmon , The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Renolution ( London : Seeker and Warburg, 1981 ), p. 38.

G.A. Cohen , 'Reconsidering Historical Materialism', NOMOS No. 36. Marxism, 1983, p. 240.

Samir Amin , Class and Nation, trans. Susan Kaplow (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1980), p. ix.

See Horace B. Davis , Nationalism and Socialism: Marxist and Labour Theories of Nationalism to 1917 (New York: Monthly Review Press. 1967), pp. 7-11; Anthony Giddens , The Nation-State and Violence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985).

Cf. Walker Connor , The National Question, op. cit , p. 8. Connor comments that Marx's 'predilection for an economic interpretation of history caused him to slight the importance of psychological, cultural, and historical elements .... The nation was to Marx essentially an economic unit'.

Marx and Engels emphasised the role of political centralisation in forging national unity in the Manifesto of the Communist Party (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House , n.d.) pp. 55-7.

This interpretation is the basis for Michael Lowy's assertion that '[t]here was a tendency towards eccnomism in [Marx's] idea that the "standardisation of industrial production and living conditions" helps to dissolve national barriers and antagonisms, as though national differences could be equated simply with differences in the production process'. 'Marxists and the National Question'. New Keft Review (No. 96, 1976), p. 82.

Nicos Poulantzas also raises this objection against determinist' reconstructions of Marx's view of the nation in State, Power, Socialism, trans. Patrick Camiller (London: Verso. 1980), p. 95.

K. Marx and F. Engels , The German Ideology. cd. C.J. Arthur (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1974), p. 57.

Ibid., p. 78.

Ibid., p. 94.

Marx, letter to P.V. Annenkov , in The Poverty of Philosophy (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press , 1978), p. 178.

K. Marx and F. Engels , The German Ideologies. op. cit. p. 53.

R.N. Berki comes close to adopting this view in 'On Marxian Thought and the Problem of International Relations', World Politics (Vol. 24, No. 1, 1971), pp. 80-105.

F. Engels , Anti-Duhring (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1943), p. 202.

K. Marx , Grundrisse, trans. Martin Nicolaus (Harmondsworth : Penguin Books, 1974), p. 474.

W.B. Gallie, for example, reads Engels' sentence in this way: 'The existence of war ... is postulated at the outset as an independent factor in the situation to be explained ... we are shown how war was used to advance certain economic purposes; but this presupposes its existence, as a permanent inter-societal possibility', Philosophers of Peace and War (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1978 ), p. 76.

See Engels , ' The Magyar Struggle' in K. Marx and F. Engels Collected Works , Vol. 8 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), p. 229.

K. Marx , 'For Poland', The First International and After , ed. David Fernbach (Harmondsworth : Penguin Books, 1981), p. 391.

See Marx's letter to Engels in K. Marx and F. Engels , Ireland and the Irish Question (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1978), p. 157.

Marx , letter to Meyer and Vogt, ibid, p. 407.

Ibid, pp. 407-8.

Ibid, p. 408.

Sec, for example, Michael Lowy , op. cit, pp. 81-5.

See Ronaldo Munck , op. cit, pp. 13-14; J.L. Talmon , op. cit, pp. 21-66.

F. Engels , Speech on Poland, The Revolutions of 1848, ed. David Fernbach (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1981), p. 100.

See F. Engels , 'The Frankfurt Assembly Debates the Polish Question', Collected Works, Vol. 7 ( Moscow : Progress Publishers, 1977 ), p. 350.

K. Marx , 'Speech on Poland', The Revolutions of 1848, op. cit, pp. 104-5.

F. Engels , 'Speech on Poland', ibid, p. 108.

F. Engels , 'Debate on Poland', ibid, p. 154.

Two writers who describe the theory in this way are Ronaldo Munck , op. cit, p. 13, and Michael Lowy , op. cit, p. 84.

See, for example, F. Engels , 'The Prague Rising', The Revolutions of 1848, op. cit, p. 127.

F. Engels , 'Democratic Pan-Slavism', Collected Works, op. cit, Vol. 8, p. 376.

G.W.F. Hegel , The Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 174.

Thus Z.A. Pelczynski argues that Marx and Engels 'ignore ... the question whether such a vast world society could ever he perceived by anyone as a community, whether it could possibly become a real, meaningful focus of loyalty and unity for a vast multitude of individuals'. Z.A. Pelczynski, 'Nation, Civil Society, State: Hegelian Sources of the Marxian Non-Theory of Nationality' in Z.A. Pelczynski (ed.), The State and Civil Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 277.

G.A. Cohen , op. cit, pp. 233-4.

Though Hegel sometimes seems to he alluding to the possibility of a future phase transcending the nation-state; see G.W.F. Hegel , Philosophy of Mind, trans. William Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894), p. 147.

For a discussion of the concept of social need in Marx, see Agnes Heller , The Theory of Need in Marx (London: Allison and Busby, 1974), pp. 127-30.

K. Marx , Grundrisse, op. cit, p. 475.

K. Marx , Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 ( Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1981 ), p. 92.

K. Marx , 'Theses on Feuerbach' in Robert C. Tucker (ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader ( New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), p. 145.

See, for example, Marx's observations on the Crimean War, quoted in J. Elster , op. cit, p. 396.

K. Marx , First Draft of 'The Civil War in France', The First International , op. cit, p. 264.

K. Marx and F. Engels , Manifesto of the Communist Party, op. cit, p. 59.

Antony Giddens , op. cit, pp. 136-7.

K. Marx and F. Engels , Manifesto of the Conununist Party, op. cit, p. 54.

Cf. Martin Shaw , 'War, Imperialism and the State System: A Critique of Orthodox Marxism for the 1980's' in Martin Shaw (ed.), War, State and Society ( London: Macmillan Press, 1984), pp. 47-69.