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On Marxian Thought and the Problem of International Relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

R. N. Berki
R. N. Berki
Affiliation:
University of Hull, England
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Extract

My argument is that the very existence of international relations poses a serious, and perhaps intractable, problem for Marxism. This is easy enough to see on the level of empirical politics, and even on the level of ideological controversy, but it is a still too little appreciated issue in the context of a thoroughgoing theoretical analysis of Marxian thought. I would like to offer some tentative remarks on this latter plane. My suggestions are not as conclusive as I would like them to be, but they may at least raise some important and topical questions. Briefly, it is my intention to show that since international relations presuppose the horizontal division of mankind into nations or states, and since Marxian thought postulates the absolute unity of mankind as its ideal, problems relating to horizontal group diversity are much more centrally relevant to the Marxian doctrine than it is usually thought. Not only is there a clear moral argument in Marxian thought against group diversity as such, but the very central tenets of Marxism have a direct, though implicit, reference to the relations between horizontal groups such as nations. I believe, further, that these aspects of Marxian thought have been lost sight of and confused or underemphasized over the years, partly by Marx and Engels themselves at the very start, and partly by their political followers, and (later) academic critics.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , October 1971 , pp. 80 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1971

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References

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2 Ibid., 63

3 Ibid.

4 Letter to Annenkov, P. V., December 28, 1846. Reprinted in Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (Moscow n.d.), 174Google Scholar.

5 Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, The German Ideology, trans, by Pascal, R. (New York 1947), 8Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., 57.

7 Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto (Moscow n.d.), 49.

8 Ibid., 76.

9 Waltz (fn. i), 127.

10 Ibid., 155.

11 Communist Manifesto (fn. 7), 76; emphasis in original.

12 Reprinted in Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (Moscow n.d.), 42; emphasis in original.

13 Marx to Engels, June 20, 1866, in Marx, and Engels, , Correspondence 1846-1895 (London 1934), 208Google Scholar. Parts of the letter are quoted with approval by Lenin, who also supplies his own paraphrasis. See Lenin, V. I., “On the Right of Nations to Selfdetermination,” Selected Works (Moscow 1935), IV, 275Google Scholar.

14 Communist Manifesto (in. 7), 39.

15 Correspondence (fn. 13), 290; emphasis in original.

16 Kautsky, Karl, Aus der Friihzeit des Marxtsmus. Engels Briefwechsel nut Kautsky (Prague 1935), 68Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., 69; emphasis in original.

18 The extent of the change from internationalism to nationalism has really been striking. Stalin, who in 1905 rejoiced in the defeat of the Tsarist armies in the Russo-Japanese War, in 1945 claimed that Soviet victory over Japan wiped out the “dark stain” of defeat by Tsarist Russia. See Goodman, E. R., The Soviet Design for a World State (New York 1960), 92Google Scholar. For further interesting details see a recent study of changes in Soviet historiography, Tillett, Lowell, The Great Friendship (Chapel Hill 1969), esp. chap. 4Google Scholar.

19 In her untranslated Polish article, “The question of nationality and autonomy,” quoted in Nettl, J. P., Rosa Luxemburg, abridged edition (London 1969), 507Google Scholar.

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31 Ibid., 49.

32 Ibid., 52.

33 Ibid., 193.

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35 Ibid., 779.

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39 Ibid., 77; emphasis in original.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid., 102-103; emphasis in original.

42 Cf., “. . . the difference between French and English materialism follows from the difference between the two nations. The French imparted to English materialism wit, flesh and blood eloquence. They gave it the temperament and grace that it lacked. They civilized it.” Marx and Engels, The Holy Family (Moscow n.d.), 174.

43 German Ideology (fn. 5), 99.

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45 “On the Jewish Question,” reprinted in Marx, Early Writings, trans, and ed. by Bottomore, T. B. (London1963), 8Google Scholar.

46 Ibid., 15; emphasis in original.

47 Ibid., 25.

48 Ibid., 21; emphasis in original.

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50 Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (Moscow n.d.).

51 It is true that Marx's own pronouncements on primitive society are not tinged with the same kind of idealization. Indeed, Marx seems to maintain, in his scarce references to the subject (e.g., in Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie), that “Asiatic” society was also antagonistic. However, I don't think that there is evidence to show that “until his death Marx upheld the Asiatic concept” [Wittfogel, K. A., Oriental Despotism (New Haven 1957), 373Google Scholar]. Marx's remarks were written in the 1860's whereas Morgan's Ancient Society appeared in 1877. Engels claims in the preface to Origin of the Family that he is executing Marx's “behest.”

52 Origin of the Family (fn. 50), 159.

53 Ibid., 161.

54 Ibid., 249.

55 Ibid., 270.

56 Ibid., 154.

57 “On the Jewish Question” (fn. 45), 25.

58 Cf., “In principle, a porter differs less from a philosopher than a mastiff from a greyhound. It is the division of labour which has set a gulf between them.” Poverty of Philosophy (fn. 4), 123.

59 I am adapting here C. B. Macpherson's insightful comparison of the individualist and Marxist conceptions of human nature. See his “The Maximization of Democracy,” in Laslett, Peter and Runciman, W. G., eds., Philosophy, Politics and Society, Third Series (Oxford 1967)Google Scholar.

60 The words of the Polish Prime Minister, Jaroszewicz, expounding the “Fundamental Principles of International Socialist Division of Labour,” in t h e course of t h e meeting of COMECON, Warsaw, June 1961.

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