Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
More than two decades after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, the ‘national question’ in Ireland is once again moving centre-stage. Demographic changes in the North, Brexit, as well as the rise of Sinn Féin in the South are all combining to drive this process.
The national question (...)
French President Emmanuel Macron’s November 11, 2018 speech, during the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, called rising nationalism across Europe a “betrayal of patriotism” and warned against “old demons coming back to wreak chaos and death.”
In rejecting claims that (...)
Amid a moment of national euphoria, Israel’s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, emerged from retirement in July 1967 to warn Israelis they had sown the seeds of self-destruction.
Israel had just won a stunning military victory against its neighbors, elating Israelis with a sense that (...)
Translators’ introduction
After more than two million people in Catalonia voted to declare independence from the Spanish state in October 2017, the state struck back. The Spanish central government, under the conservative President Mariano Rajoy, dissolved the Catalán government and charged (...)
The hundredth anniversary of Poland gaining independence raises many emotions. Over the past two years the right-wing discourse, including on historical and contemporary issues, as well as the future of Poland in a Europe in crisis, has dominated in Poland.
The Social Forum for Exchange of (...)
Black Nationalism, Black Solidarity
In the previous issue of Against the Current I discussed the ideology of white nationalism and white supremacy [see below]. The contrasting ideology of Black nationalism must be understood in the framework of the Marxist analysis of nationalism of (...)
Introduction
A major item on the agenda of the upcoming convention of Québec solidaire (QS), to be held in the Montréal suburb of Longueuil December 1-3, will be a proposal for fusion with another pro-independence party, Option nationale (ON). This will entail revisiting the relationship (...)
The following interview, which was completed just prior to Catalonia’s declaration of independence, was conducted by Griselda Qosja with drs. Jaume Castan Pinos and Alexis Vahlas.
In a 2012 piece for the Huffington Post, the writer Nannette Vonnegut recalled that living with her father, (...)
In the broad social sciences as well as in the discourse on politics, there is no consensus on how we should understand the nation – what its origins are, or on its meaning and value. By contrast there is widespread acceptance that nationalism – whether understood as doctrine, ideology, (...)
Jaime Pastor, interviewed by Josep Casulleras Nualart.
Introduction
On October 1, by decision of the Catalan government, the region’s voters will be asked in a referendum “Do you want Catalonia to become an independent state in the form of a republic?”
The referendum, which is the (...)
“Nationalism has been ‘around’ on the face of the globe for, at the very least, two centuries. Long enough, one might think, for it to be reliably and generally understood. But it is hard to think of any political phenomenon which remains so puzzling and about which there is less analytic (...)
Presentation
‘Make in India’ has failed to resonate with businesses internationally because the accumulation of capital, worldwide, is driven by more than just propaganda and a fading charisma. But this hasn’t stopped the ruling party and government machinery from ‘making’ at a furious pace. (...)
What the late British historian Eric Hobsbawm called “the short 20th century” is said to have begun with the Great War of 1914 and ended in 1989-91 with the collapse of the Soviet bloc. This remarkably bloody short century is seen as marked by Nazism, Stalinism, World War II and the Holocaust, (...)
This lecture was given at the 5th Asian Global Justice School (AGJS), IIRE-Manila, Philippines. This version replaces the one given a year before, at the 4th AGJS, which we had previously posted online on ESSF website.
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NATIONALISM AND NATIONAL LIBERATION R. S. Solis (...)
PATRIOTISM IS USUALLY understood as “love of country.” With the help of Marx’s theories of the state and of alienation, we explore what is meant by “love” and “country” in this definition. By viewing society as a contradictory relation between a social community, based on the cooperation (...)
Abstract
Marxists have been engaging with nationalism from the days of Marx and Engels until the present, generating much debate (for an overview, see Lowy, 1998, Munck, 1986 and Nimni, 1991), but also considerable confusion. This article traces the genealogy of Marxist engagement with (...)
One of the crucial achievements of historical materialism is to have shown that there can be no unity of the working class without a policy of complete national equality. That can only mean the right to self-determination of oppressed nations, up to and including independence. Otherwise, the (...)
Review of Fatherland or Mother Earth? Essays on the National Question by Michael Löwy (London: Pluto Press/IIRE, 1998).
Michael Löwy has made important contributions to Marxist thought for more than three decades. Portions of his previous writings have been gathered into the seven essays on (...)
Reflections from Taiwan on the history of creole and official, linguistic and long-distance nationalisms in Asia and Europe, and their implications for China. Is there any significant difference here between East and West?
Mercifully, we no longer hear a great deal about Asian Values. These (...)
The 1960s saw an upsurge of separatist nationalisms at the core of the capitalist system, with the movements in Catalonia, Eskudai, Occitania, Quebec, Scotland, Wallonia and Wales all making their first serious impact during that decade. Nationalist demands went on to play a role-—although by (...)
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