of the most controversial for the Marxist and would-be Marxist left.
Of course, Thatcherite tional struggle, Arguments among about tionalism generally go something like this. Lenin said that Marxists regard the nationalism oI the oppressed against the imperialist oppressor nation as progressive.
But ally concrete this immediately Cast poses the question: but is Scotland Lne DasCuC Country / Ireland ' Wales oppressed nation? (Generally the question is it a goes In wo balls. nation?' 'IS oppressed?')
Reviewed by Phil Hearse Jenkins and Minnerup, in rather audacious attempt NOVC. through all this by asserting that Lenin was rather indifferent dennions of what did, or did no!, constitute a nation. Rather he assigned the question of self-determinanational tion, 'wholly clusively to the sphere of rather than to the sphere of abstract definitions. As our authors put it:
'Unlike Stalin he needed no scholastic yardstick Which to measure uc claims of a community to chauvinism the fight of the Basque people nationhood. The primacy of the political struggle for equality turned the oppressed national minorities into allies of the proletariat in the overthrow of the autocracy, and the proletarian revolution into the condition for the liberation of the nationalities the right to national self determination on the part of the was Workie precondition for its own 51-2)
In the light of viewing nationalist sentiment this fashion, our questioning about national movements has to be reposed in a rather different way: do they articulate genuicy UNC demands democratic aspirations of pressed groups in an imperialist world? To the extent that they do they are progressive, irrespective of definitions of nationality.
The second crucial theoretical point that Jenkins winerus The Irish freedom struggle: "progressive, irrespective of definitions of nationality" make is in relation to what they describe the of 'neoresurreence nationalism'. Put simply, their thesis is that the nationalisms such as exist in Scotland, Wales.
Catalonia, Quebec and the difDasuuC coulill y ferent the nationalism which grew up with the rising revolutionary bourgeoisie.
form of petty-bourgeois, , democratic nationalism has been able to articulate the democratic aspirations of the masses in a way which the dominant forces in the labour movement have not.
The consequence is that socialists have to confront the democratic themes raised by these new nationalist movements by championing their demoand not world, the nation state will survive as the only rational unit of social organisation The second majos focus of the book, attemp ting to apply the more general theoretical points. is a sustained argumen: about the British state. nationalism the brills! Isles and the Labour Part!
British state. evitably this turns into ar argument about the whole character Britisn ponues loda!
The key to the argument is thai conceptions ot socialism the Labour (including until recently the bulk of the left) have been constrained within a tun damental respect for the parameters of the British state — both its territorial extent and its institutional forms.
Further within that framework, interna tionally traditional Labourism capitulates imperialism; and even its most radica domestic projects ('na. tionalise the monopolies'!) have tended to accommodate to statist and authoritarian models Fortunately, and this ha been vividly confirmed by recent events, increasing body of the Labour left which rejects these accommodations. Socialism Ultimately, the logic of the Jenkins/Minnerup argument comes down to this The programme socialism cannot avoid in corporating, as part of its very essence, democracy and the demo cratic aspirations op pressed groups, , of which nationalism is one of the many manifestations.
Engagement with democracy is not an 'add.
but crucial to both assembling a viable for change reality which will look different to the bureaucratl monstrosities in Easterr Europe.
from this its only point of view that we car look at the nationalism o the oppressed. The case!
put most eloquently defending national struggle in Ireland, bui exthe cement sulll.
which can hesitate over the problem of taking sides in such a situation is one that has lost its democratic emancipatory instincts somewhere along the road.
or buried them beneth heap of economic determinism 'Socialism is not the subjection of humanity to economics, it is the subjection of economics humanity. Its aim politics rathe than either nationality or class must be the supreme criterion judgement of conflicting much as anywhere else.' forces in as Citizens and Comrades Brian Jenkins and Gunter Minnerup Pluto Press, £4.95.
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Reaganite imperialist nationalism hardly pose any great analytical problems. But what of the Irish na-
against the Spanish state, Scottish nationalism and the enduring demand for German reunificaton?
theme the book marxis socialism, only