Don't show this to Uncle Charlie

"Nation or Class?" is a pamphlet published by the International Communist Current (ICC), a small and somewhat peculiar left-wing radical group. The ICC claim adherence to the so-called Left Communist or ultraleftist tradition, associated with Anton Pannekoek, Herman Gorter and (rightly or wrongly) also with Amadeo Bordiga. The ICC's most immediate ideological precursor seems to be the Italian Left Fraction in Exile, an ultraleftist group in France during the 1930's. The Left Communists were anti-Stalinist, but nevertheless rejected the Trotskyist movement. The Trotskyists, in turn, accused the Left Communists of being hopeless sectarians. This is somewhat ironic, since - of course - Trotskyism was accused of pretty much the same thing by stronger anti-Stalinist left parties such as the Spanish POUM, the British ILP or Norman Thomas' Socialist Party in the United States. Scattered Left Communist groups of rather diverse kinds still exist today, with the ICC being one of the more visible groups. Well, at least if you use a magnifying glass! The ICC has always been strongly sectarian and completely isolated from most of what counts for leftist politics, something the group apparently takes a certain pride in.

"Nation or Class?" is an ICC pamphlet arguing against any kind of support for national liberation movements. The ICC admits that national liberation could sometimes play a positive role during the "ascendant" epoch of capitalism, but with World War I capitalism definitely entered its epoch of "decadence", making genuine national liberation struggles impossible and presumably undesirable. The ICC criticizes Lenin and the Bolsheviks for their support to national liberation struggles, while arguing that Rosa Luxemburg's position on the matter was better. They make a connection between Lenin's and Luxemburg's different analysis of imperialism, and their respective positions on national liberation. To the ICC, the world of decadent capitalism has been decisively portioned between imperialist great powers. Even worse, *all* nations - even the smallest - are forced to conduct an imperialist policy. Thus, "national liberation" either means that a nation passes from the control of one great power to another, or becomes an imperialist bully in its own right, or both.

It should be noted that the ICC regards the regimes in the Soviet Union, China and elsewhere as "state capitalist" and hence just as imperialist as the United States, Britain or France. Thus, national liberation struggles during the Cold War were, to the ICC, simply a way of former Western colonies to become hirelings of Russian imperialism instead. In rare cases, the trend went in the opposite direction, as when Israel went from Soviet asset to Western ally, or when Siad Barre's regime in Somalia switched its allegiance from the Soviet Union to the United States. In even rarer instances, formerly subjugated nations managed to become imperialist great powers in their own right (China).

The ICC attacks Vietnam with special venom, presumably because most of the left supported North Vietnam and the NLF during the Vietnam War. ICC's attacks on Vietnam sound surprisingly "right-wing": peasants in North Vietnam resisted collectivization, peasants in South Vietnam fled before the North Vietnamese army, the reunited Vietnam has forced labour as in Pol Pot's Cambodia, and its bullying of Cambodia or the Chinese minority is "imperialist". Another target of the pamphlet is the Congolese rebel movement which attempted to invade Katanga from bases in Angola. Apparently, the rebels were former supporters of pro-Western strongman Moise Tshombe, temporarily allied with the pro-Soviet MPLA regime in Angola. Angola, of course, was another favourite nation of leftist solidarity activists...

Obviously, "Nation or Class?" wasn't intended to win any leftist popularity contest!

Since the ICC rejects *all* support to national liberation movements, no matter how temporary or tactical, the only alternative is a "straight" working-class revolution, during which the workers reject, once and for all, all forms of nationalism and imperialism, both domestic and foreign, and strike out on their own, with soviets and red guards, in a kind of simplistic reprise of the 1917 October revolution in Russia. Then, the revolution must be immediately spread around the world, with force of arms if necessary. National self-determination will not be granted after the revolution either. Here, the ICC supports Rosa Luxemburg's position. Luxemburg criticized the Bolsheviks for having granted national self-determination to Finland, the Ukraine and other non-Russian regions after the October revolution. The only alternative to national liberation is the "world-wide civil war" between the working class and the bourgeoisie, and the subsequent construction of a "world human community" after the victory of the world revolution.

I admit that "Nation or Class?" is somewhat more interesting than ICC texts on average, so I will therefore grant it three stars. But no, I can't say I agree with ICC's truly ultraleft position on matters national...