- Nations must have a certain minimum sizeand large and powerful ones were to
be encouraged – what Engels called the ‘miserable remnants of former nations’
should dissolve. A distinction is drawn between historic and non-historic nations,
where ‘history’ is understood as actions and movements possessing class
significance. The ‘miserable remnants’, examples of which include the Basques,
Bretons and Gaels, have no historic significance. They argue that after a workers’
revolution there will always be the danger of counter-revolution, led by
‘conservative’ elements in society, and that these ‘rotting remnants’ would be
among them. Interestingly, Mill also maintained that these peoples are better
absorbed into larger nations. - National self-determination was to be encouraged if it helped revolution. In the
main Marx and Engels believed that national struggles should only be encouraged
in the big nations of central and west Europe: France, Britain and Germany.
Struggles on the ‘edge of Europe’ were not generally supported. Which means,
for example, that they did not in 1848 support the Irish struggle against the
British – they later changed their views, and the reasons for the shift in their
position are briefly discussed below. - They opposed Russia, which they saw as the primary source of reaction in
Europe, and so tactically supported the Habsburg (Austro-Hungarian) Empire –
which meant opposing nationalist movements among, for example, the Czechs,
Slovaks and Serbs (Mill supported these struggles). Basically, their attitude to the
nationalisms of their time was determined by the role that they played in the
historic class struggle. - Ireland: from an orthodox Marxist perspective Ireland in the nineteenth century
appears backward – Engels describes it as the agricultural appendage of Britain,
or more specifically England. It had not developed capitalism (except in a small
north-eastern corner of the country) – which was a precondition of a workers’
revolution. What is more, the Catholic Church was a source of ‘false
consciousness’. But Marx and Engels gradually shifted to the view that the
liberation of Ireland was a condition for revolution in Britain: Britain (or England)
was the nation most likely to experience revolution, but the Irish constituted a
source of competition to British workers, which worsened the conditions of the
latter, but without fuelling revolution, because British workers saw their struggle
against Irish labour as nationalist (and religious) in character. Paradoxically,
through granting Ireland independence British and Irish workers would develop
class solidarity, and recognise that the bourgeoisie was their true enemy.
Civic and ethnic nationalism
In the rest of this chapter we focus on more recent discussions of nationalism. Much
of the debate is structured around two forms of nationalism (or nationhood): civil
and ethnic. Michael Ignatieff defines a civic nation as ‘a community of equal, rights-
bearing citizens, united in patriotic attachment to a shared set of political practices
and values’ (Ignatieff, 1993: 7). For a civic nationalist ‘belonging’ to a nation entails
a rational choice rather than an inheritance. In contrast, an ethnic nationalist
maintains ‘that an individual’s deepest attachments are inherited, not chosen’Chapter 12 Nationalism 267