Re: [OPE] Anti-imperialism and nationalism

GERALD LEVY wrote:
> I think the question should be whether we should support Lenin's advocacy of self-determination for oppressed nations.
If one puts it this way there can not be any meaningful discussion.
However, if you break it down into your three questions things become
more precise and the answers less obvious.

> 1. Lenin's theory of imperialism: e.g. is it still valid?
>
I would need to do a detailed study to answer it clearly. But obviously
there is a different set of mechanisms operating between states today,
save for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, than in the Age of
Empire in which a Lenin or Bukharin was writing.

>
> 2. (related to the first question) Is it accurate in the present day
> to assert that there is a division of the world between capitalist nations which are oppressor nations and ones which are oppressed?
>
The very notion of 'oppressor nation' takes the bourgeois ideology of
nationalism as its premise. It collapses the distinction between (i) the
sovereign state apparatus of a territory, (ii) the population and its
division into classes and (iii) the imagined community that binds parts
of the population together on the ideological plane.

//Dave Z
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Received on Wed Dec 9 16:06:08 2009