A right to which the bourgeoisie or petty bourgeoisie of a territory within a state would supposedly be entitled: that of submitting the formation of an independent state to a referendum among the whole population, or the part of it considered "co-national".
The right to self-determination and the feudal empires
The slogan of the right of nations to self-determination was taken up by the Second International as a way of addressing the national liberation of the bourgeoisies subjugated under the last great feudal empires: Austria-Hungary, Russia, etc. Later, the right to self-determination was also applied to the colonies and protectorates of the European states.
The critique of the right to self-determination and the understanding of imperialism
However, the right to self-determination soon met with criticism among the Marxists who were beginning to work out an understanding of imperialism.
The development towards the Great State, which characterizes the modern epoch and gains in importance with the progress of capitalism, condemns the whole mass of mini- and micro-nationalities to political weakness from the outset.
Alongside a few very powerful nations, which are the true managers of capitalist development because they possess the material and intellectual means indispensable for preserving their economic and political independence, "self-determination", the autonomous existence of mini- and micro-nations, is increasingly illusory.
This return to autonomous existence of all, or at least of the great majority, of the nations currently oppressed would only be possible if the existence of small states had possibilities and prospects for the future in the capitalist epoch. For the time being, the economic and political conditions proper to a large state are so necessary in the struggle for existence of the capitalist nations that even the politically independent small states, formally equal in rights, that exist in Europe play only a symbolic role and are most of the time puppets of other states.
Can one speak of "self-determination" for the formally independent Montenegrins, Bulgarians, Romanians, Serbs or Greeks, or even, in a certain way, for the Swiss? (…)
The second fundamental aspect of recent evolution that makes this slogan utopian is capitalist imperialism. (…) The result of this tendency is the permanent liquidation of the independence of an ever-growing number of countries, peoples and entire continents. (…)
Taking into account this evolution and the need of the great capitalist states for the struggle for existence on the international market, for world politics and for colonial possessions, what is most suited to carrying out their functions under present conditions, that is, what best corresponds to the needs of capitalist exploitation, is not the national state -as Kautsky supposes- but the imperialist state. (…)
As socialists understand it, this right [self-determination] must by its very nature have a universal character, and the mere fact of recognizing this is enough to show that the hope of realizing this "right" within the existing system is a utopia in direct contradiction with the tendency of capitalist development, on the basis of which social democracy was constituted. Returning to the goal of dividing all existing states into national units and delimiting them from one another on the model of national states and small states is a desperate and, from a historical point of view, reactionary attempt.
Rosa Luxemburg. The National Question and Autonomy, 1908
Lenin's position on the right to self-determination
Part of Russian social democracy, headed by Lenin, rejected Rosa Luxemburg's early conclusions, changing the formula of the right to self-determination from right of nations to right of peoples.
People is, fundamentally, the proletariat together with, or under the leadership of, the petty bourgeoisie. If it is the petty bourgeoisie that leads, the utopian and reactionary meaning it gives to the right to self-determination does not change.
After the bankruptcy of the bourgeois parties, new social forces -the intelligentsia and the petty bourgeoisie, seeking refuge in the workers' movement- tend to impose their unrealizable wishes on it. If the socialist parties had not had the possibility of verifying objectively what actually corresponds to the needs of the working class, and had confined themselves to imagining what is "good" and "useful", their program would have turned out to be a collection of utopias.
Rosa Luxemburg. The National Question and Autonomy, 1908
And if it is the proletariat that leads, what sense would it make for it to march backwards, towards the creation of a national state? The national state is created to organize its exploitation; the proletariat will not create national states.
The idea that the self-conscious proletariat could create a modern state is as absurd as proposing to the bourgeoisie a new establishment of feudalism.
Rosa Luxemburg. The National Question and Autonomy, 1908
But the underlying question that Rosa Luxemburg is pointing to, and that Lenin does not see, even though he writes his reply to Luxemburg's text a few months before the outbreak of the world war, is that once the world capitalist market has developed there can be no independent development of national capitalism, and there is therefore no room for true national independence. In that framework, the right to self-determination and independence cease to have a historically progressive meaning, and with it national self-determination becomes a reactionary slogan.
Rosa Luxemburg's final argument against the right to self-determination will assert that the same thing that makes defensism and its slogan of defense without annexations an impossible, reactionary and de facto imperialist slogan is what turns the slogan of the right to self-determination into a gift to imperialism and a shot in the foot for the revolutionary movement itself:
As long as capitalist states exist, as long as imperialist world policy determines and shapes the internal and external life of the states, the right of national self-determination will have nothing to do with their practice, either in war or in peace.
Moreover: in the present imperialist milieu there can be no wars of national defense whatsoever, and any socialist policy that disregards this particular historical milieu, that seeks to be guided in the midst of this world whirlpool solely by the one-sided viewpoints of its own country, will be nothing but a house of cards from the outset.
Rosa Luxemburg. The Crisis of Social Democracy, 1916
The experience of the right to self-determination during the Russian Revolution
Rosa Luxemburg understood imperialism as a historical phase of capitalism as a whole. Lenin, on the other hand, thought that imperialism was a phase in the development of each national capital. That is why, for Rosa Luxemburg, the Leninist slogan of the self-determination of peoples and its emphasis on national liberation movements could be nothing but a manifestation of boundless optimism, and were bound to have, as they did, disastrous consequences for the Russian revolution.
What is this right to self-determination supposed to mean? That socialism is opposed to every form of oppression, including that of one nation by another, is the ABC of socialist policy.
In spite of this, politicians as serious and critical as Lenin, Trotsky and their friends, who respond with nothing but an ironic shrug to any kind of utopian phraseology such as disarmament, the League of Nations, etc., in this case made a hollow phrase of exactly the same kind their favorite hobby. This is due, it seems to me, to a policy made up for the occasion.
Lenin and his comrades calculated that there was no surer method of winning the foreign peoples of the Russian Empire over to the cause of the revolution, to the cause of the socialist proletariat, than to offer them, in the name of the revolution and of socialism, the most extreme and unlimited freedom to determine their own destinies. It is a policy analogous to the one the Bolsheviks adopted towards the Russian peasantry, satisfying their land hunger with the slogan of direct appropriation of the noble estates, on the assumption that this would win them over to the revolution and the proletarian government. In both cases, unfortunately, the calculation proved completely wrong.
It is clear that Lenin and his friends hoped that, by becoming champions of national freedom to the point of advocating "separation", they would make Finland, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, the Baltic countries, the Caucasus, etc., faithful allies of the Russian Revolution.
But exactly the opposite happened. One after another, these "nations" used their newly acquired freedom to ally themselves with German imperialism as mortal enemies of the Russian Revolution and, under Germany's protection, to carry the banner of counterrevolution into Russia itself. A perfect example is the little game played with Ukraine at Brest, which caused a decisive turn in the negotiations and brought to light the political situation, both internal and external, that the Bolsheviks now face. The attitude of Finland, Poland, Lithuania, the Baltic countries and the peoples of the Caucasus shows us convincingly that this is not an exceptional case but a typical phenomenon.
Certainly, in all these cases it was not really the "people" who drove this reactionary policy, but the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois classes. These, in complete opposition to their own proletarian masses, perverted the "right to self-determination", turning it into an instrument of their counterrevolutionary policy.
But (and we come to the crux of the matter) herein lies the utopian, petty-bourgeois character of this nationalist slogan: in the midst of the harsh realities of class society, when antagonisms are sharpened to the utmost, it simply becomes an instrument of bourgeois rule.
The Bolsheviks learned, to their own great harm and that of the revolution, that under capitalist rule there is no self-determination of peoples, that in a class society each class of the nation strives to "determine itself" in a different way, and that for the bourgeois classes the conception of national liberation is entirely subordinated to that of their class rule. The Finnish bourgeoisie, like that of Ukraine, preferred the violent rule of Germany to national freedom if the latter bound it to Bolshevism.
The hope of turning these real class relations into their opposite, of winning a majority vote for union with the Russian Revolution by making it depend on the revolutionary masses, as Lenin and Trotsky seriously intended, reflects an incomprehensible degree of optimism.
And if it was merely a tactical device in the duel with Germany's policy of force, then it was a very dangerous game with fire. Even without the military occupation by Germany, the result of the famous "popular plebiscite", supposing it had come to that in the border states, would have given the Bolsheviks little cause for joy.
We must take into account the psychology of the peasant masses and of large sections of the petty bourgeoisie, and the thousand ways the bourgeoisie has of influencing the vote. Indeed, it must be considered an absolute law that, in these matters of plebiscites on the national question, the ruling class will always know how to avoid them when they do not serve its purposes or, when they are held, will use every means to influence their results, the same means that make it impossible to introduce socialism by popular vote.
The mere fact that the question of national aspirations and separatist tendencies was introduced in the midst of the revolutionary struggle, even put on the table and made the watchword of socialist and revolutionary policy as a result of the Brest peace, caused the greatest confusion in the socialist ranks and actually destroyed the positions won by the proletariat in the border countries.
In Finland, where the proletariat fought as part of the close-knit Russian socialist phalanx, it achieved a predominant position in power; it had the majority in parliament and in the army, reduced its bourgeoisie to complete impotence and was master of the situation within its borders.
Or take Ukraine. At the beginning of the century, before the nonsense of "Ukrainian nationalism", with its silver rubles and its "universals", and Lenin's hobby of an independent Ukraine were invented, Ukraine was the backbone of the Russian revolutionary movement. There, in Rostov, Odessa and the Donets region, the first rivers of revolutionary lava burst forth, setting the whole of southern Russia ablaze in a sea of flames (as early as 1902-1904) and thus preparing the uprising of 1905. The same thing happened in the present revolution, in which southern Russia supplied the picked troops of the proletarian phalanx.
Since 1905, Poland and the Baltic lands were the most powerful and important revolutionary centers, and in them the proletariat played a role of the first magnitude.
How is it, then, that the counterrevolution triumphs in all these countries? The nationalist movement, precisely because it tore the proletariat away from Russia, mutilated it and delivered it into the hands of the bourgeoisie of the border countries.
The Bolsheviks did not act according to the same genuinely internationalist class policy they applied in other matters. They did not try to achieve the compact union of the revolutionary forces of the whole empire. They did not defend tooth and nail the integrity of the Russian Empire as a revolutionary area, opposing to every form of separatism the solidarity and inseparability of the proletarians of all the countries within the sphere of the Russian Revolution, with the latter functioning as the supreme political command.
Instead, the Bolsheviks, with their hollow nationalist phraseology about "the right to self-determination up to separation", achieved exactly the opposite, and gave the bourgeoisie of the border countries the most refined, most desirable pretexts for their counterrevolutionary efforts.
Instead of warning the proletariat of the border countries that all forms of separatism are simply bourgeois traps, they did nothing but confuse the masses of those countries with their slogan and deliver them up to the demagogy of the bourgeois classes.
With this nationalist demand they brought about the disintegration of Russia itself and put into the enemy's hands the knife that would be plunged into the heart of the Russian Revolution. Certainly, without the help of German imperialism, without "German rifles in German fists", as Kautsky's Neue Zeit put it, the Lubinskys and other petty scoundrels of Ukraine, the Erichs and Mannerheims of Finland and the Baltic barons would never have won over the best of the socialist working masses of their respective countries. But national separatism was the Trojan horse in which the German "comrades", bayonet in hand, made their entry into all those lands.
The real class antagonisms and the real balance of military forces brought about the German intervention. But the Bolsheviks provided the ideology with which this counterrevolutionary campaign was masked; they strengthened the position of the bourgeoisie and weakened that of the proletariat.
Rosa Luxemburg. The Russian Revolution, 1918