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16 - Marxism and the National Question

from Part II - Transnational and Religious Missions and Identities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2023

By
Enzo Traverso
Edited by
Cathie Carmichael ,
Matthew D'Auria  and
Aviel Roshwald
Cathie Carmichael
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Matthew D'Auria
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Aviel Roshwald
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Summary

Marx’s thought on nationhood emerged from the cosmopolitan legacy of the “radical Enlightenment.” It took shape in the crucible of European nationalisms, the persistence of dynastic multinational empires, and the appearance of socialism as a new political actor.1 In 1848, the national question was deeply intermingled with the question of class. As a minority current of socialism, at least until the end of the nineteenth century, Marxism promoted a new form of political internationalism of which the most significant expression was the foundation of the International Workingmen’s Association in 1864. A constitutive tension quickly appeared between this cosmopolitan aspiration – well synthesized by The Communist Manifesto’s sentence: “the workers have no country”2 – and the growing tendency of the nascent socialist movements to inscribe themselves into national patterns made of inherited cultures, languages, traditions, and social practices.

Keywords

BolshevismCosmopolitanismInternationalismIrish QuestionJewish QuestionMarxismPeoples Without History
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism , pp. 351 - 371
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Further Reading

Achcar, Gilbert, Marx, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism (Chicago: Haymarket, 2013).Google Scholar
Anderson, Kevin, Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, Solomon F., The World of Nations: A Study of the National Implications in the Work of Karl Marx (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frankel, Jonathan, Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).Google Scholar
Haupt, Georges, Löwy, Michael, and Weill, Claudie (eds.), Les marxistes et la question nationale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997).Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric J., Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).Google Scholar
Luxemburg, Rosa, The National Question: Selected Writings (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976).Google Scholar
Marx, Karl, On Colonialism (Moscow: Progress, 1968).Google Scholar
Molnár, Miklós, Marx, Engels et la politique internationale (Paris: Gallimard, 1975).Google Scholar
Rosdolsky, Roman, Engels and the “Non-Historic” Peoples: The National Question in the Revolution of 1848 (Glasgow: Critique Books, 1986).Google Scholar
Traverso, Enzo, The Jewish Question: History of a Marxist Debate (Leiden: Brill, 2018).Google Scholar
Young, Robert, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001).Google Scholar

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