Marxism and Nationalism

Antonio Gramsci y la cuestión nacional italiana: Un análisis de los artículos de L’Ordine Nuovo (1919-1920)

“…A saber, los Estados nacionales grandes eran considerados instrumentos al servicio del progreso porque asumían una función modernizadora: acababan con los vestigios del Antiguo Régimen, sentando las bases para el desarrollo del capitalismo y, por ende, del proletariado. De aquí las simpatías de Marx y Engels, por ejemplo, por los movimientos de unificación nacional alemán e italiano y su desconfianza, por el contrario, ante los nacionalismos orientados a la realización de pequeñas unidades estatales a través de procesos de secesión (Avineri, 1991).…”

State of Nationalism (SoN): Nationalism and Social Class

“…23 According to the authors, the nation is to be read as a highly-articulated social, economic and political construct that cohered, not incidentally, with bourgeois interests and aspirations. 24 The 'nationalism' espoused by the middle classes was thus 'a false representation of the real', 25 which, upon closer examination could be exposed as a quest for political power cast in the terms of the day -as illustrated by Sieyes's claim that the Third Estate was the nation, and, according at least to his understanding (e.g., power accrued from the nation), was the rightful bearer of sovereignty. This same connection informed the ideological claims of the many 'liberal nationalisms' of the era, but provoked in turn, as indicated below, a healthy response from other sectors of society which devised nationalisms congruent with their own interests.…”

New Dialectics and Political Economy

“…75 Writing in 1968, with these and similar passages in mind, Shlomo Avineri passed the following judgement: 'Marx's sole criteria for judging the social revolution imposed on Asia are those of European, bourgeois society itself'. 76 Surely this remark, and the label 'Europocentric', with which he then tags Marx, are intended to be pejorative.…”