Self-determination

All workers, regardless of national background, have the same class interests. They all need to eliminate capitalist exploitation and replace the rule of the bosses with the rule of the workers — socialism.

This tremendous task cannot be achieved without the closest possible unity and trust among all workers. But when one or several sections of the working class are oppressed over and above the class as a whole — when they belong to a people who constitute an oppressed nation — the problems of unity grow complicated.

Racism is a tool of the bosses

Racism and national oppression are tools of the bosses. They divide the workers by making the more privileged group feel it is in their interest to go along with the terrible conditions imposed on the oppressed. The result is that all workers suffer, but the oppressed groups suffer by far the most.

The solidarity needed to fight the bosses in the days ahead can only be built through a struggle to break down the racism and inequality that divide the workers. White workers must show by their actions that they will fight to extend to the oppressed people all the rights and benefits they already have.

Communists support the right of self-determination

National oppression is not confined to the workplace, and it is not expressed only in lower wages and worse jobs. An oppressed nation is subject to humiliation, deprivation, scorn and repression in every area of social life, so much of its struggle is political — a fight to win democratic rights it is denied.

Beginning with Karl Marx, communists and revolutionary socialists have always supported the right of oppressed nations to self-determination, while working to unite the workers of all nationalities into a common fighting party of the working class.

Supporting that right means supporting the oppressed people in whatever choice they make about the political form that best suits their historical circumstances. They might join a federation of national states with others; they might form an autonomous region; they might decide that assimilation into the dominant nation with full equality best serves their interests; or they might establish a separate independent state of their own.

The oppressed nations have no state of their own

The Black, Latine, Asian, Native and Arab nations have no state of their own. The state that rules the U.S. answers to the billionaire class, not to any section of the workers, and these nations are held within its borders and denied political power at every level.

Self-determination and equality go together

For white workers to grasp the right of self-determination does not mean they should advocate separation. Nor does it mean abandoning the struggle to win over the backward whites who want to shut Black and other oppressed peoples out of their schools, neighborhoods and the rest. It is by supporting both the right of self-determination and the struggle for equality that white workers can help break down the racism that has divided our class — and bring closer the day when all workers can join in the fight to tear down capitalist exploitation and oppression.

Additional reading

  • The Weapon of Theory — by Amílcar Cabral (1966). Address delivered to the first Tricontinental Conference in Havana in January 1966. Cabral explains national liberation as a people’s recovery of the power to make its own history and freely develop its productive forces. Political independence means little as long as foreign capital and a dependent local ruling class still control the country’s economy and state.
  • The right of self-determination and the class struggle — by Sam Marcy (1983). Argues that the national question stands at the heart of the class struggle in the U.S.: the bourgeois-democratic revolution was never completed for Black people, who — like Native peoples — constitute an oppressed nation, so their struggle must be understood as the right to self-determination, not merely a fight against discrimination.
  • The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination — by V.I. Lenin (1915). Why backing the right of oppressed nations to secede is the road to uniting the workers of all nations.
  • The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination — by V.I. Lenin (1916). Lenin’s fuller statement tying the right of self-determination to the socialist revolution and the struggle against imperialism.