User:Yerevantsi/Left nationalism

Left-wing nationalism, also known as left nationalism, socialist nationalism, or progressive nationalism, is a form of nationalism that espouses socialist economics and traditional left-wing social positions, such as social equality, popular sovereignty, national self-determination, secularism. It has its origins in the Jacobinism of the French Revolution. Left-wing nationalism typically espouses anti-imperialism. It stands in contrast to right-wing nationalism, and often xenophobic nationalism and fascism, although some forms of left-wing nationalism have included intolerance and racial prejudice.

History

Classical Marxism and nationalism

Marxism identifies the nation as a socioeconomic construction created after the collapse of the feudal system, which was utilized to create the capitalist economic system. Classical Marxists have unanimously claimed that nationalism is a "bourgeois phenomenon" that is not associated with Marxism. However, certain interpretations of the works of Karl Marx have claimed that although he rejected nationalism as a final outcome of international class struggle, he tacitly supported proletarian nationalism as a stage to achieve proletarian rule over a nation, then allowing succeeding stages of international proletarian revolution.

Marxism, in certain instances, has supported nationalist movements if they are in the interest of class struggle, but rejects other nationalist movements deemed to distract workers from their necessary goal of defeating the bourgeoisie. Marxists have evaluated certain nations to be "progressive" and other nations to be "reactionary".

Though Marx and Engels saw the origins of the nation state and national identity as bourgeois in nature, both believed that the creation of the centralized state as a result of the collapse of feudalism and creation of capitalism had created positive social conditions to stimulate class struggle. Marx followed Hegel's view that the creation of individual-centred civil society by states as a positive development, in that it dismantled previous religious-based society and freed individual conscience. In The German Ideology, Marx claims that although civil society is a capitalist creation and represents bourgeois class rule, it is beneficial to the proletariat because it is unstable in that neither states nor the bourgeoisie can control a civil society. Marx described this in detail in The German Ideology, saying:

“ Civil society embraces the whole material intercourse of individuals within a definite stage of development of productive forces. It embraces the whole commercial and industrial life of a given stage, and, insofar, transcends the state and the nation, though on the other hand, it must assert itself in its foreign relations as nationality and inwardly must organize itself as a state. ”

Marx and Engels evaluated progressive nationalism as involving the destruction of feudalism, and believed that it was a beneficial step, but evaluated nationalism detrimental to the evolution of international class struggle as reactionary and necessary to be destroyed. Marx and Engels believed that certain nations that could not consolidate viable nation-states should be assimilated into other nations that were more viable and further in Marxian evolutionary economic progress.

On the issue of nations and the proletariat, the Communist Manifesto says:

“ The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word. National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto. The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat. ”

Ireland: Left-wing Republicanism

Marx viewed Ireland as a source of opposition to Britain and to global capital because it was a locus of progressive nationalism. Though Marx and Engels criticized Irish unrest for delaying a worker's revolution in England, both Marx and Engels believed that Ireland was oppressed by Great Britain but believed that the Irish people would better serve their own interests by joining proponents of class struggle in Europe, as Marx and Engels claimed that the socialist workers of Europe were the natural allies of Ireland. Also, Marx and Engels believed that it was in Britain's best interest to let Ireland go, as the Ireland issue was being used by elites to unite the British working class with the elites against the Irish.

Like Marx himself, Irish nationalists of the socialist republican type saw in poverty the subversive and revolutionary potential for the overthrow of the old social order.

Left-wing nationalism by country

Africa

Burkina Faso

The Marxist and Pan-Africanist Thomas Sankara was President of Burkina Faso in 1983–87. Brought to power by a military coup, he became an anti-colonialist icon for many Africans.

Eritrea

The main nationalist groups fighting for succession from Ethiopia in the Eritrean War of Independence, the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) were left-wing.

Ghana

Kwame Nkrumah Nkrumah observes that nationalism constitutes only one stage in the liberation struggle, whose ultimate goal is the achievement of, Pan-Africanism and Socialism. http://books.google.com/books?id=rqYEhtONIBgC&pg=PA88&dq=nkrumah+observes+that+nationalism+constitutes+only+one&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4cdmVNmfEoqkyASzmIHIAw&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=nkrumah%20observes%20that%20nationalism%20constitutes%20only%20one&f=false

South Africa

Nelson Mandela identified as both an African nationalist, an ideological position he held since joining the African National Congress (ANC), and as a socialist. When asked how he reconciled his "creed of African nationalism with a belief in dialectical materialism", Mandela answered that he sees no contradiction.

Asia

Bangladesh

The Bengali nationalist and socialist Awami League (AL) led the independence movement from Pakistan, achieving independence in 1971. AL's four basic principles of nationalism, secularism, socialism, and democracy were adopted as Bangladesh's state ideology and included in the preamble of the Constitution of Bangladesh in 1972.

India

The Indian National Congress (INC) played a major role in the independence movement from the British Empire. After achieving their goal in 1947, the INC remained the country's dominant party for most of the second half of the 20th century and is currently one of the two major parties of India. Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, cultivated an image of "a modern, moderately left-wing nationalist leader."

Pakistan

Pakistan Peoples Party

Awami National Party

Sri Lanka

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE or Tamil Tigers) was a left-wing nationalist, separatist and secular organization which operated between the mid-1970s and 2009 and called for a Tamil state in northern part of the country, which it temporarily controlled. The organization was classified as a terrorist organization by a number of countries.

Europe

In Europe, a number of left-wing nationalist movements have a long and well-established tradition. In some Western European countries, such as France, Spain and the United Kingdom, left-wing nationalists have historically led the separatism and autonomist movements.

Armenia

The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) is a "drawn equally to socialism and nationalism." The party has a long history. Being established in 1890, it was active in the Armenian inhabited lands of the Russian and Ottoman empires. In 1918 the party played an instrumental role in the establishment of the First Republic of Armenia, which, although short-lived, was the first Armenian state since the Middle Ages. Today, it remains one of the main parties in Armenia.

Azerbaijan

Musavat

France

Former Interior and Defense Minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement has been described as a left-wing nationalist. His Citizen and Republican Movement differs from other left-wing French parties by its euroscepticism.

In Corsica, the two nationalist parties—Party of the Corsican Nation and Corsica Libera—are left of the center.

Union Démocratique Bretonne

Greece

The Socialist Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou undertook the task "to undo the political equation that supported the disfiguring hegemony of the victors—to disentangle nationalism from the anti-Communist identifications used by conservative, autocratic forces to reinforce their domestic hegemony and to mobilize the public to embrace a socially progressive nationalism."

Georgia

Social Democratic Party of Georgia Mensheviks

Ireland

Irish Socialist Republican Party

Irish Republicanism

Sinn Féin

Spain

In Spain, almost all major separatist and nationalist parties are left-wing, including those in Basque Country, Catalonia, and Galicia. Ezker abertzalea, left-wing Basque nationalism has a long tradition. The Republican Left of Catalonia is currently one of the largest party in the province. It has rallied for an independence referendum. In Galicia, both major nationalist parties: Galician Left Alternative and Galician Nationalist Bloc are left of the center.

Yugoslavia

Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under the rule of Josip Broz Tito and the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, promoted both communism and Yugoslav nationalism (Yugoslavism). Tito's Yugoslavia was overtly nationalistic in its attempts to promote unity between the Yugoslav nations within Yugoslavia and asserting Yugoslavia's independence. To unify the Yugoslav nations, the government promoted the concept of "Brotherhood and Unity", where the Yugoslav nations would overcome their cultural and linguistic differences through promoting fraternal relations between the nations. This Yugoslav nationalism was opposed to cultural assimilation, as had been carried out by the previous Yugoslav monarchy, but was instead based upon multiculturalism. While promoting a Yugoslav nationalism, the Yugoslav government was staunchly opposed to any factional ethnic nationalism or domination by the existing nationalities, as Tito denounced ethnic nationalism in general as being based on hatred and was the cause of war. The League of Communists of Yugoslavia blamed the factional division and conflict between the Yugoslav nations on foreign imperialism. Tito built strong relations with states that had strong socialist and nationalist governments in power, such as Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser and India under Jawaharlal Nehru.

In spite of these attempts to create a left-wing Yugoslav national identity, factional divisions between Yugoslav nationalities remained strong and it was largely the power of the League of Communists and popularity of Tito that held the country together.

United Kingdom

In a 1984 interview in Politics and Letters, Williams distinguishes between the reactionary nationalism of the Labor Party based on a unitary British state, and the progressive nationalism of oppressed peoples (Welsh, Scots, Irish) in colonized and other subjugated territories. Working Through the Contradictions: From Cultural Theory to Critical Practice

The Scottish independence movement is mainly left-wing and is spearheaded by the Scottish National Party (SNP), who have been on the left of centre since the 1980s.

Plaid Cymru

Latin America

Argentina

• Both books present integralist nationalism as a nostalgic movement associated with the liberal oligarchy. In their view, the populist nationalism developed by the left wing of the Radical Party (FORJA) was the same populist nationalism that supported Peronism, which is perceived as left-wing nationalism. Those works attempted to rehabilitate Peronism as an authentic revolutionary, anti-imperialist, nationalist movement, a precursor to the left-wing anti-imperialist struggle in Latin America.

Middle East

Arab world

http://books.google.com/books?id=u1sKLlRWUCcC&pg=PA78&dq=left-wing+secular++nationalism&hl=en&sa=X&ei=SKHqU-GnH8b9yQSQ54DADQ&ved=0CE8Q6AEwCTgK#v=onepage&q=left-wing%20secular%20%20nationalism&f=false ...Nasser's Arab socialist regime and Syria's Soviet-allied Ba'ath regime. Pan-Arab nationalism and socialism had been defeated in 1967, and consequently the left-wing secular parties in the Arab world entered a period of crisis.

Nasserism

Ba'athism

Palestinians

Palestinian fedayeen

Fatah

US policies eroded the left and progressive nationalism in the Middle East helped the rise of right-wing political Islam http://books.google.com/books?id=n_qgMMVTW2YC&pg=PA552&dq=%22progressive+nationalism%22+left&hl=en&sa=X&ei=N036U7L2OIGhyAS1s4KwDQ&ved=0CDQQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=%22progressive%20nationalism%22%20left&f=false

• Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2003). Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity. New York: New York University Press. p. 78. ISBN 9780814731550. He supported Nasser's "progressive nationalism" in Egypt and was contemptuous of the old Arab ruling families, whom he regarded as lackeys of U.S. imperialism.

West's fight against progressive nationalism (Nasser) supported Muslim Brotherhood along with Saudis http://books.google.com/books?id=8FNIchn0jJMC&pg=PA73&dq=%22progressive+nationalism%22+left&hl=en&sa=X&ei=eFD6U9fgJJW0yATH_IC4CA&ved=0CDcQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=%22progressive%20nationalism%22%20left&f=false

Algeria

National Liberation Front (Algeria)

Israel

Labor Zionism

Iran

Mohammad Mosaddegh

National Front (Iran) Democrat Party (Persia)

Kurdish parties

Kurdistan Workers' Party

Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Kurdish nationalist, social democracy

Turkey

Yeğen, M. (2007) Turkish nationalism and the Kurdish question, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30:1, 119-151, DOI: 10.1080/01419870601006603... A second difficulty is due to the existence of distinct Turkish nationalisms. The ‘extreme’ nationalism of the Nationalist Action Party,4 a left-wing Turkish nationalism,5

Left-wing Kemalist nationalism is one of the four Turkish nationalisms" Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit has been described as a left-wing nationalist due to his euroscepticism.

Republican People's Party (Turkey)

Democratic Left Party (Turkey)

North America

United States

During the 1960s–80s the left-wing revolutionary Black nationalist Black Panther Party was prominent in African American communities.

According to a 2013 article by Sean Scallon in the The American Conservative, since the early 1990s "we have seen a muscular Left nationalism rise to set liberal foreign policy, and begin to set the Democratic agenda here at home." He argues that since the Vietnam War in the mid-1960, the American Left (the New Left in particular) opposed jingoism. He concludes, "The New Left's non-interventionist, anti-jingoism mentality may have channeled dissent against the Cold War and the legacy of Vietnam, but it lost force without a Cold War to dissent from."

Canada

Main article: Nationalisms in Canada

In Canada, nationalism is associated with the left in the context of both Quebec nationalism and pan-Canadian nationalism (mostly in English Canada but also in Quebec).

Quebec

Main article: Quebec nationalism

http://media.leidenuniv.nl/legacy/Erk%20-%20Nations%20and%20Nationalism.pdf

In Quebec, the term was used by S. H. Milner and H. Milner to describe political developments in 1960s and 1970s Quebec which they saw as unique in North America. While the liberals of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec had opposed Quebec nationalism which had been right-wing and reactionary, nationalists in Quebec now found that they could only maintain their cultural identity by ridding themselves of foreign elites, which was achieved by adopting radicalism and socialism. This ideology was seen in contrast to historic socialism, which was internationalist and considered the working class to have no homeland.

The 1960s in Canada saw the rise of a movement in favour of the independence of Quebec. Among the proponents of this constitutional option for Quebec were militants of an independent and socialist Quebec. Prior to the 1960s, nationalism in Quebec had taken various forms. First, a radical liberal nationalism emerged and was a dominant voice in the political discourse of Lower Canada from the early 19th century to the 1830s. The 1830s saw the more vocal expression of a liberal and republican nationalism which was silenced with the rebellions of 1837 and 1838. In the 1840s, in a now annexed Lower Canada, a moderately liberal expression of nationalism succeeded the old one, which remained in existence but was confined to political marginality thereafter. In parallel to this, a new catholic and ultramontane nationalism emerged. Antagonism between the two incompatible expressions of nationalism lasted until the 1950s.

According to political scientist Henry Milner, the manifestation of a third kind of nationalism became significant when intellectuals raised the issue of the economic colonization of Quebec, something the established nationalists elites had neglected to do. Milner identifies three distinct clusters of factors in the evolution of Quebec toward left-wing nationalism: the first cluster relates to the national consciousness of Quebecers (Québécois), the second to changes in technology, industrial organization, and patterns of communication and education, the third related to "the part played by the intellectuals in the face of changes in the first two factors".

English Canada

Main article: Canadian nationalism

https://www.google.com/search?q=progressive+nationalism&oq=progressive+nationalism&aqs=chrome..69i57.3845j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=progressive+and+secular+nationalism+quebecois&spell=1&tbm=bks

In English Canada, support for government intervention in the economy to defend the country from foreign (i.e. American) influences is one of Canada's oldest political traditions, going back at least to the National Policy (tariff protection) of Sir John A. Macdonald, and has historically been seen on both the left and the right. However, calls for more extreme forms of government involvement to forestall a putative American takeover have been a staple of the Canadian left since the 1920s, and possibly earlier. Right-wing nationalism has never supported such measures, which is one of the major differences between the two. Leftist nationalism has also been more eager to dispense with historical Canadian symbols associated with Canada's British colonial heritage, such as the Canadian Red Ensign or even the monarchy (see Republicanism in Canada). English Canadian leftist nationalism has historically been represented by most of Canada's socialist parties, factions with the social-democratic New Democratic Party (such as the Movement for an Independent Socialist Canada in the 1960s and 1970s), and in a more diluted form in some elements of the Liberal Party of Canada (such as Trudeauism to a certain extent). Today it manifests itself pressure groups such as the Council of Canadians. This type of nationalism is associated with the slogan "it's either the state or the States", coined by the Canadian Radio League in the 1930s during their campaign for a national public broadcaster to compete with the private, American radio stations broadcasting into Canada, representing a fear of annexation by the United States. Right-wing nationalism continues to exist in Canada, but tends to be much less concerned with integration into North America, especially since the Conservative Party embraced free trade after 1988. As well, many far-right movements in Canada are nationalist, but not Canadian nationalist, instead advocating for Western Separation or union with the United States.

Notable left-wing nationalist figures

• Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egyptian politician, President (1956–70)
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Nelson Mandela, South African
• Jean-Pierre Chevènement, French politician, cabinet minister
• David Ben-Gurion
• Golda Meir
• Yitzhak Rabin
• Jacques Parizeau, Premier of Quebec
• Alex Salmond
• Jawaharlal Nehru
• Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
• Abdullah Öcalan
• Jalal Talabani

Compatibility of leftism and nationalism

In his war-time essay "The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius" (1941), George Orwell, a self-described democratic socialist, wrote that an "intelligent Socialist movement will use their patriotism, instead of merely insulting it, as hitherto."

Bogdan Denitch opined that nationalism "can be formally left-wing or right-wing in theory", but "when not directly involved in defending an oppressed nation" is in essence "populist".

John Judis argued in a 2018 New York Times piece that nationalism is "neither good nor evil, liberal nor conservative" and that the "perception of a common national identity is essential to democracies and to the modern welfare state, which depends on the willingness of citizens to pay taxes to aid fellow citizens whom they may never have set eyes upon." He argued that "the decline of liberal and social-democratic parties [in the west] is a result at least in part of their inability to distinguish what is legitimate and justifiable in nationalism from what is small-minded, bigoted and contrary to the national interest it claims to uphold."

Critique

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1987.tb01886.x

https://www.demdigest.org/how-nationalism-can-help-democracy/?fbclid=IwAR3nHHpI6LkSunUiYj3wmsmS28V-vE57a9a1DmDbiQpnUh5Xa81pFsePVvI

Left-wing criticism

German-born American Marxist political writer Paul Mattick attacked left-wing nationalism in a 1959 article:

“ It is not the function of socialism to support nationalism, even though the latter battles imperialism. But to fight imperialism without simultaneously discouraging nationalism means to fight some imperialists and to support others, for nationalism is necessarily imperialist-or illusory. To support Arab nationalism is to oppose Jewish nationalism, and to support the latter is to fight the former, for it is not possible to support nationalism without also supporting national rivalries, imperialism, and war. To be a good Indian nationalist is to combat Pakistan; to be a true Pakistani is to despise India. Both these newly 'liberated' nations are readying themselves to fight over disputed territory and subject their development to the double distortion of capitalist war economies. ”

Steve Coleman of the Socialist Party of Great Britain wrote in 1988 that nationalism and left-wing values are incompatible: "Nationalism is at the top of the list of political illusions used to blind capitalism's victims: the workers of the world." He added: "There is no shortage of disillusioned left-wing Zionists in Israel today who will have to make up their minds whether to support nationalism or its ceaseless enemy - socialism." French Marxist philosopher Étienne Balibar writes that it is impossible to distinguish between progressive "good" nationalism and reactionary "bad" nationalism. Communalist author Ken Furan, who calls nationalism "a poison", criticizes the anti-globalist left for promoting the idea of the nation-state as "a bulwark against capitalism". He considers that "there is no 'benevolent' or 'progressive nationalism.'"

Equating with Nazism and fascism

Among other political scientists, A. James Gregor equates socialist nationalism with National Socialism (Nazism). Historian Paul Gootenberg opined that "In the historical extremes, socialist nationalism became its obverse, national socialism." The Communist Party of Kampuchea (Khmer Rouge), responsible for a genocide, has been described as fascistic. Christopher Hitchens, writing for the neoconservative magazine The Weekly Standard, suggested that Serbian president Slobodan Milošević was "riding a mutation of socialist nationalism into national socialism."

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• Frankel, Jonathan. 1984. Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862-1917. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Originally published in 1981.]
• Milner, Henry and Sheilagh Hodgins. 1973. The Decolonization of Quebec: An Analysis of Left-Wing Nationalism. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. p. 257 available online.
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Category:Political movements Category:Left-wing politics Category:Nationalism Category:Anti-imperialism