A recurring analogy made is with the Irish nationalist struggle against British imperialism and I have addressed this before.
Supporters of Ukraine have told us that ‘when internationalists support the Ukrainians right to resist militarily the Russian invasion and obtain arms from NATO countries, it is not an endorsement of NATO. There have been many movements of national liberation in the past which have called upon imperialist countries for arms without being condemned by socialists: Irish nationalists in 1917, the Spanish republic in 1936, the communist resistance in World War Two, to name a few.’
I wrote in reply –‘Let’s just take the Irish example. Was Ireland an independent state in 1916 or a British colony? Were the Irish rebels in 1916 seeking to join the German imperialist alliance, or did they claim ‘We serve neither King nor Kaiser’? Did the Irish workers movement participate as a separate political and armed force from the bourgeois nationalists, and did not James Connolly repeatedly declare the political independence of the Irish working class? Was his anti-imperialism the anti-imperialism of opposition to foreign rule or opposition also to capitalism and for the creation of a Socialist Republic? Where does the capitalist Ukrainian state and the ‘Ukrainian resistance’ stand on all these questions today?’
‘But let’s not leave the Irish analogy there. What happened to the Irish national struggle when the forces of the working class proved to be too weak and the movement became a purely bourgeois one? ‘Labour’ was told to wait, just as in Ukraine today, and the forces of bourgeois nationalism accepted a settlement with imperialism that left the working class more divided than before, subject to two reactionary regimes that inflicted years of austerity, unemployment and emigration built upon Catholic Church abuse of women and children and Protestant sectarianism and discrimination. Today the capitalist Irish state supports the Ukrainian capitalist state and imperialism, particularly that of the US, upon which its current success depends . . .’
I could have gone on to reference the policy of Marxists in Ireland over the last 50 or so years, which, despite many mistakes, never collapsed into support for Irish republicanism, never ceased to organise separately, never sought alliance with or peddled illusions in the Irish bourgeoisie and never looked, unlike republicans, to right-wing or establishment forces in the United States. The nature of that struggle meant that the idea of support from any western imperialist power would have been considered ridiculous.
In the Tendance Coatsey debate, one comment proclaims ‘I wonder if “Irish Marxism” would be in favour of someone arguing that Irish self-determination was of no interest to Irish workers since all it led to was a “bourgeois” republic. And after all, Irish nationalism enjoyed the support of imperialist Germany in both world wars.’
This is answered in the paragraphs above, but let’s carry out a thought experiment, which is obviously purely theoretical, to see how much the self-determination of independent capitalist states matters to Marxists.
Imagine that Britain had decided to go for the hardest of Brexits, with the ambition of setting itself up as a strategic geopolitical competitor to the European Union. This involved the hardest of hard borders within the island and severe disruption to trade between the Irish State and the rest of the European Union as transit through Britain became impossible. This precipitated armed republican attacks along the border on various institutions of the Northern State which were answered by the arrival of British troops to suppress the attacks.
Within the North of Ireland the arrival of these troops and armed clashes raised political tension enormously with riots and deaths in Belfast, Derry and other smaller towns. Republican groups hailed these circumstances as another example of ‘Nuair a bhíonn deacracht ag Sasana, bíonn deis ag Éirinn’ – ‘England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity’ and launched an armed campaign against British rule. In the Irish State the ruling parties called upon the Irish people to resist British imperialism.
The conflict between Britain and the EU cannot be confined to Ireland and the English Channel is closed to trade while there are clashes between the Royal Navy and French vessels. To signal their full support to the Irish member state and prevent it buckling to British demands the EU sends its own troops to bolster the meagre Irish Army confronting the British.
What would be the attitude of socialists to such a march towards war? Would we support the self-determination of Ireland and its historically justified struggle against British imperialism and partition? Would we welcome the intervention of the EU as temporary allies in a morally justified struggle alongside the Irish capitalist state? Certainly republicans in the North would hail the new anti-imperialist struggle and the opportunity to fight for a ‘Socialist Republic’ and commend their renewed role as defenders of the Catholic people in the North, pretty much regardless of its effectiveness.
Well, this would be an extraordinary turn of events, but Irish socialists would begin by interrogating the claims of its own rulers and state, especially its claims to be defending the democratic rights of the Irish people. We would recall that it had viciously repressed previous armed revolts against partition and had opposed any progressive movement towards Irish unity while allying with British imperialism.
This previous collaboration would be held up as proof that there was no fundamental conflict, and certainly no fundamental difference, between British imperialism and the alliance of the Irish state with the rest of the European Union. There would therefore be no grounds upon which the Irish working class should follow its own state in a war against Britain on behalf of one side of the imperialist rivalry between Britain and the EU, which would determine the nature of the war.
The same interests would be true for workers in Britain, who would have no interest in supporting British imperialist antagonism to the EU. In the North of Ireland socialists would fight sectarian division, which the British state would use to bolster its own position on the island, while the Irish state would be compelled to base itself on the other side of the sectarian divide.
In summary, there are no circumstances in which Irish socialists would give up their independent organisation to support the Irish capitalist state, in or out of alliance with outside imperialist powers, for the sake of a struggle under a banner of self determination, in which neither of these has any interest. A war that saw the European working classes kill each other for the sake of a capitalist state that has always been content with the partition of the country, while selling itself as a tax haven for US multinationals, is one that only someone lost to socialism could consider supporting.
For many years radicals in Britain confused opposition to British imperialism in Ireland and support for Irish democracy with support for the Irish republican movement. This movement has now given up any serious pretence at struggle against British rule and accepted its role as partners in office with one of the most reactionary sectarian parties in Europe. Some of the British and European left have learned nothing from this experience but are stupid enough to point to Ireland as justification for their support for a different capitalist state but the same imperialism they once opposed.
Back to part 2
Sráid Marx 
When you go back to the basics of political philosophy to maybe jump over the ideology of the present you might find this thought. It is just one paragraph of a summary made by Leo Strauss of the the political philosophy of Rousseau. The severe American critic of Rousseau Irving Babbitt said of him that he is the most influential writer of modern times and maybe of all times. He is said to be both the father of the Totalitarian State and the father of the main opposition to the Totalitarian State, due to his account of natural freedom. In short Rousseau’s political philosophy is complicated.
Strauss writes ‘ The pre-political nation is more natural than civil society, which is produced by contract. The nation is closer to the original state of nature than is civil society, and therefore it is in important respects superior to civil society. Civil society will approximate the state of nature on the level of humanity to a higher degree, or it will be more healthy, if it rests on the almost natural basis of nationality or if it is has a national individuality. National custom or national cohesion is a deeper root of civil society than are calculation and self-interest and hence than the social contract. National custom and ‘ National philosophy’ are the matrix of the general will, just as feeling is the matrix of reason. Hence the past, and especially the early past, of one’s nation tends to be become of higher dignity than any cosmopolitan aspirations. If mans humanity is acquired by accidental causation, that humanity will be radically different from nation to nation and from age to age’.
Of course Strauss does not agree with Rousseau but he does not deny his historical importance. The first part about the nation in certain respect being superior to civil society based on civil contract has generally prevailed in Europe and has been exported abroad.
The second point that man’s humanity is acquired mainly to accidental causation is presented by Rousseau as a thought experiment in his second treatise. The followers of Rousseau, especially the German philosophers called this accidental causality, the historical process or history with a capital T. Looks like Rousseau anticipated Marx in certain respects.
With Marx the final outcome is somewhat hazy, we know he made a great effort to understand the historical process, especially the transition to capitalism from feudalism, the question we ask does the historical process as Marx knows it have a definite beginning and does it indicate a definite end. In his lectures on Marx, Strauss maintained that Marx seemed to preserve the idea of a beginning of the historical process in something akin to Rousseau, for Rousseau this was the original state of nature, for Marx the beginning is the original communism. More than anything else Strauss dismissed Marx because he ascribed to him an end to history thesis. When Strauss fought out his intellectual battle with the Russian born Marxist Alexander Kojeve, the end of history thesis was the chief bone of contention between them.
Kojeve argued that the philosophy of Hegel-Marx indicated a world society of the near future, he also indicated however that the world society of the future would be the beginning of the decline, the time of Nietzsche’s last man. All progressives who ‘believe’ in the historical process argued Strauss are haunted by the thought of Nietzsche last man.
It must be stated that from the beginning of his career, Nietzsche mocked the
very idea of an historical progress, ‘On the advantage and disadvantage of History for Life’. Strauss argued that a new third wave of political philosophy begun with the above essay, he called it the third wave of modernity, the one that we are still riding today. The political philosophies of Rousseau, Kant, Hegel and Marx belong to the second wave of modernity.
Marxist’s like Lukacs dismissed Nietzsche’s philosophy as reactionary ideology, his long essay on the matter in his giant work the ‘destruction of German reason’ makes for interesting reading but I have to say it falls flat. Lukacs sticks dogmatically, to the line set first outlined out by Engels, that Hegel was the high point of bourgeois philosophy, everything afterwards constituting bourgeois irrationalism and ideological reaction.
This mini intellectual history of my own seems very far from the real battle front taking place over the future of Ukraine yet all the three waves of modernity are not without some form of representation; International Liberals, Nationalists, International Reactionaries and maybe a handful of diehard socialists. It looks more and more like Spain once was, the furnace of Europe.
Note : The first wave of modernity covers Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza and Locke. The United States of America is sometimes referred to as the nation born out of the political philosophy of John Locke.
They don’t seem to understand the basic Marxist concept that what is progressive at one time, becomes reactionary at another. Lenin sets out three different time periods. Firstly, there is the time period in the 18th/19th century when the expansion of markets, and capitalist production leads to the formation of bourgeois nation states. The bourgeois-democratic national revolution is progressive at this point, precisely because it is what is required to clear away the obstacles to capitalist development – see Two Tactics of Social-Democracy.
Secondly, there is the period when these nation states have already been established, but where, alongside them, there remains all of those colonies, and annexed nations where that has not occurred, and where those constraints, thereby, still exist. A bourgeois-democratic revolution, in these countries is, then, still progressive. That period could be seen as the early part of the 20th century.
Thirdly, there is the period of imperialism, in which the idea of independent small nation states is itself reactionary, and where existing nation states seek to become big, multinational states. As Trotsky describes, this process of forming multinational states then becomes progressive, and the demand for new nation states reactionary. As far as the small states are concerned, our answer is not championing the reactionary, and utopian ideas of the independent nation state, which must inevitably fall prey to larger imperialist states, but is, as Trotsky describes in relation to the Balkan Wars etc., their joining together into their own multinational federations on a voluntary basis.