Gan Owain ab Owain
Part of our Darlleniadau Hir (Long Reads) series
In contemporary liberal discourse on the nation the notion of ‘civic nationalism’ predominates. This conception holds that nationality is a product of affinity; that loyalty to the fundamental principles on which the nation-state has been formed is all that is required to be a member of the nation. This framing is itself a reaction against the racial conception of the nation advanced by imperialist powers in the 19th century, one in which the nationality of a person could be determined by their family history and genetics. As Marxists, we should recognise the erroneousness of both of these positions. The latter because it relies upon reactionary, discredited notions such as the existence of biological race and their relationship to culture and ethnicity1. The former because it is fundamentally at odds with the Marxist-Leninist conception of the nation2. Concerningly however, this liberal view of nationality appears to be common amongst the revolutionary left. This is particularly noticeable amongst the nationalist-left in the “small-nations” who, pre-empting a critique of their programmes as fundamentally reactionary from “big-nation” chauvinists, have co-opted the erroneous and reactionary liberal perspective3. As Marxists of the small-nation, it falls to us to develop a counter position rather than to adopt or discard these conceptions out of hand. For reasons that will be detailed below, the civic conception of the nation is eroding the national consciousness of the people of the small-nation, fueling the growth of the fascist-right and is undermining the strength of the nationalist movement. In response, the revolutionaries of the small-nation necessarily must advance a genuinely Marxist analysis and champion a scientifically sound conception of nationality; linguistic nationalism.
Firstly, we must define our terms. When we talk of linguistic nationalism in this context, we are talking about a specific view of the nation as a people group, rather than as a state or a specific territory. A nation, from a Marxist perspective, is a group of people who share a common territory, language, economic life and culture. A state by contrast is a piece of social machinery, designed to facilitate the control of a society by a ruling class. We are not claiming that specific states or national territories should represent one specific speaker population alone, or claiming the right of every linguistic group to the status of nation, let alone statehood. Instead, we are referring to a conception of nationality that hinges on the language of the people in question. For example, this model would hold that someone whose primary language is Welsh – the language they live in, interact with their family and community in, engage in intellectual production in – would be a member of the Welsh nation. As noted in Marxism and the national question, there is no nation that speaks several languages – the outgrowth of this is that there must be a single national language from which the nation springs forth.* To understand this perspective we have to understand the nature of language. Language is not some ephemeral, ungraspable cultural artifact. It is a tool of production, a key component in the economic life of the nation. Neither a part of the superstructure or the base, language is a means of production and one of its primary products is the nation – in the form of a common economic life and culture4. Without language the nation ceases to exist as a body of people by the Marxist-Leninist definition. As such, a linguistic model of nationality holds that the members of the nation are therefore the speakers of the national language. Those who do not speak the language of the nation are either;
A) Members of another nation, separated by geography or circumstance but should they return, would be fully capable of engaging with the national life of that body of people, or…
B) A nationless person, unable to engage with the life of that nation due to their inability to speak the language of it.
This perspective on nationality naturally grows from the Marxist-Leninist understanding of a nation as “a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture”5. If a nation is defined by its members speaking a specific common language, which is the underlying aspect for other defining features such as psychological makeup and economic life, then people of that nationality must therefore be speakers of that common language. The language of the nation is the most important aspect of national production and reproduction. Without that language the production of the culture of the nation ceases and what remains is a shadow of the national culture produced through the language of another nation. National language is the method by which children are given nationality, through the process of learning the culture of their nation. It is the means by which the national culture is communicated, in spoken, signed and written forms. It is the mechanism by which economic engagement takes place, the terrain on which production is completed, the means by which consumption is achieved. No personal, organisational or communal interaction is possible without the common national language. When taking this view language emerges as the defining aspect of nationhood and nationality from a Marxist perspective. That is not to say that it is the only characteristic that matters, but that it undergirds all other defining features. There can be no common economic life without a common language through which economic co-operation and intellectual production can be done – common culture and psychology are themselves outgrowths of this process. Only the common territory remains uninfluenced by the linguistic dimension of nationhood, and acts almost as an independent variable. A people that speak the same language but exist in disparate territories are a people but not a nation. The inverse is also true, where peoples that exist within the same territory but speak a different language are not as one whole a cohesive nation. Only a group of people within a common territory who share a language – from which springs the common economic, cultural and psychological features – are a nation. For the nation to exist, a common language is of primary importance. Through this perspective of the nation and of language we come to understand the scientific nature of the linguistic conception of nationality.
By contrast, what is the liberal conception of nationality that predominates and why is it erroneous? ‘Civic nationalism’ is a view of nationality that holds that loyalty to the fundamental principles of the state makes a person a member of the nation. This can manifest in generic terms, holding that members of the nation must hold to the broad principles of “freedom” or “equality”, or more specific variations, holding members of the nation to loyalty to the state or to love the cultural output or landscapes of the nation. From a Marxist perspective this view of nationality is erroneous and bourgeois. It conflates the nation and the state far too closely. As Marxist-Leninists, we recognise the fundamental right of nations to self-determination. We do not, however, recognise any inherent link between the nation-state and those who belong to that nation. It is entirely possible for members of the nation to be opposed to the principles of the nation-state or opposed to the existence of the nation-state altogether without forfeiting their membership of that nation. If, for example, a member of the Welsh nation opposed the establishment of a Welsh nation-state, that would not make them no longer Welsh. If this conception were accurate, it would render nationality a matter of political opinion. Every Marxist-Leninist outside of nations in the process of constructing socialism would be functionally nationless. It serves a bourgeois class perspective to construct nationality in these terms. Through this lens it is easy to create people of true nationality, who have fidelity to the bourgeois constitution, and traitors to the nation who, despite having been granted freedoms by the benevolent state, have the arrogance to critique the principles on which it was founded. This perspective is particularly violently utilised against those born outside the territory of the state. It allows for the existence of the “good immigrant”, the person who has come to the country to contribute and not to critique the state or advocate for themselves – and the “bad immigrant”, who betrays the nation by demanding change from a government that was never intended to represent them. This form of national belonging is always at the mercy of the ruling class. A model that can apply to the good citizen who upholds the principles of the state and is withdrawn from the inconvenient agitator, whether they are born into the nation or not. As the needs of the bourgeois class change, the boundaries of nationality shift. An example of this process in ‘Britain’ can be seen in the treatment of the Windrush Generation, who were given legal and (partial) social recognition of ‘British’ nationality in the post-war period when the state’s demand for labour outstripped supply. This national identity was then withdrawn when the state found it more valuable to deport this population. When there is a skills shortage, a more open, tolerant view of nationality is adopted to welcome exploitable immigrant labour. That offer of belonging can then be withdrawn easily should the needs of the ruling class demand it. This is not a tolerant, inclusive view of nationality – but a bourgeois, exclusionary model that is employed by the ruling class to best suit their interests.
The imprecise and fickle nature of this view of nationality does not go unnoticed by the broader public, and it makes for easy fodder for fascist agitation. Like a great many reactionary right-wing talking points, the problems they identify often aren’t fictional. They take very real and impactful problems experienced by the working class and utilise those genuine issues to advance their programme. The conception of civic nationalism is no different. The fascist raises the query “what makes an immigrant part of our nation ?”. The civic nationalist response is that the contribution of the immigrant population to the state makes them members of the nation. This is a deeply reactionary position to take. It advances the argument that the only reason immigrant populations don’t deserve to be victims of pogroms is because they staff vital state assets or provide a boost to the economy. In the meantime, the fascist has proposed a very simple question to which they have a simple answer; genetics and bloodlines are the metric for nationality. In return, the civic nationalist has offered a changeable, imprecise and fundamentally reactionary answer which only bolsters the convictions of the blood-and-soil nationalists and those sympathetic to them. When socialists take up this civic view of nationality we are doing the work of the reactionaries for them. Instead, we should be presenting a progressive, scientific alternative that genuinely advances the proletarian perspective.
What advantages does a linguistic conception of nationality hold for the proletarian? Firstly, its scientific accuracy. The linguistic conception of nationality is directly related to the Marxist-Leninist conception of the nation. It holds that the language of the nation is one of the defining characteristics of nationhood, and to be a part of that nation is to utilise the national language. Language is the bedrock on which the economic and social life of the nation rests. If we are to take the definition of nation seriously, we cannot then ignore the implication this has on nationality. To belong to a nation is to be part of its social body, to engage with its economic and social reality, to exist within a common linguistic-economic life that sits at the core of nationhood. This cannot be done without speaking the language of the nation. To be a part of the nation without speaking the language is just as impossible as being part of the nation without engaging with its economic life. There is no way to hold nationality without belonging to the body of people who are tethered to the economic life of the nation. In the same way, there is no way to hold nationality without being engaged with the body of people who speak its language, from which the economic life of the nation develops.
Secondly, it does away with imprecise, bourgeois notions like civic nationality and with it any sense that loyalty to particular political principles is the basis for nationality. It does not base a person’s nationality based on their affinity for the state or the constitution, and instead anchors nationality in material reality. As class-conscious proletarians, our advocacy for our own liberation necessarily puts us at odds with the principles of a state we cannot endorse. Removing the association between nationality and the state dissolves any cultural hesitancy we may have about wholeheartedly calling for the dissolution of that state and criticising the fundamental principles it was founded on.
Thirdly, it does away with unscientific, reactionary notions like genetic or bloodline nationality and ethnicity. As Marxists, we understand that race is a socially invented concept that has no bearing on any person’s nationality. While we do not make reductive claims like that race has no bearing on social realities, we know that there is no material or genetic basis to racial distinction and that race itself is a pseudo-scientific concept created and utilised to promote bourgeois social control. If we acknowledge this to be the case, we cannot also believe that it has any bearing on nationality. Tying national identity to the linguistic means of production not only makes nationality an easily identified social phenomena, it also does away with bourgeois notions like race science and civic loyalty. With the right support and resources anyone is capable of learning and using the national language, just in the same way that anyone is capable of engaging with the national economic life and adopting the culture of the nation as their own. Not only is the linguistic model of nationality a scientific one, it also removes any arbitrary barrier between peoples and lays bare the social realities of the nation unclouded by erroneous bourgeois conceptions.
What options do these competing models of nationality hold for the small-nation nationalist?
When advancing the cause of national self-determination, the civic nationalist will establish that their nationalism does not have anything to do with ethnicity, language or culture. They will argue that their nationalism centres “pragmatic political decisions” and “upholding the principles of democratic consent”. The nation-state they seek to establish, while superficially draped in the culture of the nation for the purpose of popular appeal, is a representative liberal polity. It will wrap itself in the symbology of the nation, take on its flags and songs, its national day may be a public holiday, but it will not represent the nation politically or defend it against cultural erosion. Rather it will champion a liberal internationalism, encourage what is best for the global market rather than the economic interests of the nation as a body of people, let alone the proletarians of that nation. This nationalism encourages the speaking of international languages for ease of commerce, in effect dissolving the nation for the good of the market. It invites the international capitalist class to plunder the nation, for the benefit of the imperialist class and to the detriment of the proletarian. It encourages the export of the youth of the nation as cheap labour overseas while they generate massive surplus from the immiserated labour of the nation. Fundamentally, this is a nationalism in name only – the state formed will represent the interests of the capitalist-imperialist class, not that of the nation and certainly not its toiling classes.
On the other hand, when the fascist advances the cause of national self-determination they lean on their discredited racial conceptions of the nation and the naked violence it encourages. They will argue that their nationalism centres the people’s welfare, assuming that the people in question fit their racial categorisation of a member of the nation. They will do away with the imprecise, changeable view of nationality advanced by the civic nationalist, and prioritise those people whose genetic profile best matches the fascist’s image. This nationalism’s economic programme does not significantly differ from that of the civic nationalist. It too will invite in the finance capitalist class to prey on the national working class. However, it will also remove any obscuration of the violence of liberal capitalism. The imagined divisions between the proletarians, exploited by the civic nationalist when it suits the bourgeois classes they serve, will become open state policy. Violence against and accumulation from those now excluded from the nation by the fascist will be the primary area in which the state of affairs diverge from the civic nationalist’s model of the state. This artificial divide in members of the nation serves the international capitalist class and their compradors, but not the proletarians who make up the largest section of the nation. Both serve the international capitalist class and both are fundamentally opposed to the welfare and self-determination of the nation.
In stark contrast, the linguistic conception of the nation not only reflects best the needs of the proletarian but also naturally advances a nationalism that will sustain the nation rather than profiting from its disintegration. The linguistic conception of the nation holds that the speakers of the national language, those engaged with the economic life of the nation, make up the body of the nation. This reflects the proletarian experience of national life as a web of social and economic interactions mediated through the national language, whether spoken, written or signed. For the small-nation nationalist, this model is invaluable not only for its ability to elucidate the boundaries of the social body of the nation and centre a proletarian perspective, but also because for a great many small-nations, the national language is critically endangered. While this is in-large-part due to the forces of capitalist-imperialism and the social effects of capitalist reproduction on minoritised languages, it is also partly due to beliefs like the civic conception of the nation. A prevailing argument amongst people who have little to no ability in their minoritised national language is “I don’t speak Xish and it doesn’t make me feel any less X”. This is a direct product of a civic nationalist, or possibly a blood-and-soil nationalist perspective. Either due to their security in their racial background, or because their loyalty to the state has never been brought into question, the people who make this argument do not feel it is necessary to take up their national language. As has been demonstrated above, this fundamentally disconnects the person from the nation. The person who doesn’t have a grasp of their national language has no chance of fully engaging in their national life and so their engagement with the nation becomes a facsimile mediated through another language. When a person doesn’t have the ability to understand or use their national language they become severed from the life of the nation. It could be argued that the linguistic conception is therefore exclusionary, but the opposite is true. As a result of this position, the sense of belonging to the national life is available to anyone with the fidelity enough to the nation to take up study of their language. No person is allowed to feel comfortable in their nationality as a result of inaction – no one is privileged above anyone else due to their race or place of birth or political opinion. The option to be part of the nation and engage with the national economic life is open to anyone, but is given to no one. If you find yourself feeling discomfort with this conception, consider that you may be adhering to a civic nationalist conception more from the perspective of comfort than one of reason. The author makes this argument as a person born in the territory of a small-nation with extremely limited abilities in that nation’s national language. This argument is not being advanced from an elitist perspective of someone who has strong ability in the national language. Rather it is being advanced because it appears to be the most logically consistent, scientific approach to the question of nationality from a Marxist perspective. One that, if adopted by communist and socialist-republican organisations, would provide a clear counterpoint to the predominant bourgeois, reactionary conceptions.
An acknowledgement should be made that, particularly in small-nation contexts, the option to take up study of and use the national language is often limited. The language has often been minoritised, peripheralised to remote regions. It is often not taught in general education, or taught in a way that does not provide people with the ability to speak proficiently. Study materials are often prohibitively expensive, there is often a stigma against language use and working class people may simply not have the energy or time to take up study. Does this make this definition elitist, given that in many cases it is only those with the wealth or time enough to give the language proper consideration who are able to use it? On the contrary, this definition exposes the elitist and fundamentally linguicidal conditions that the people of the small-nations find themselves in. As the heartlands of the language are eroded, as spaces for use disappear, as curriculums remain insufficient, as the cost of study rises it becomes more and more difficult to fully embrace nationhood. This is cultural genocide by stealth. It is the indifferent, liberal face of linguistic supremacism – the mirror image of the pogroms and violent education regimes of the settler colony. This perspective is not itself elitist but is the tool by which we reveal the linguistic elitism of our current conditions and develop our response. The reaction of the Marxist-Leninist to this fact mustn’t be to liberalise their own analysis but to rally against the regimes that create these conditions. We must organise language classes, distribute free resources and transform our own organisations to accommodate and promote our own languages. We must develop spaces for utilising the national language, rally to the defense of the linguistic heartlands and radically drive for their expansion. We must set our course for a future where the national language will be the language of the whole people again.
At its core, the question of nationality is a socio-economic one. Nationality grows from the material fact that nations exist as economically linked social groupings of people, bound by a common means of national production and reproduction – language. The recognition of this fact must naturally draw us to the conclusion that nationality is linguistically defined. In contrast to the bourgeois conceptions of civic or race-based nationality, the linguistic model provides a clear, scientific analysis based on the Marxist-Leninist model of nationhood. It offers us a perspective that aligns with the proletarian experience of the nation, places economic and social relationships at its core, and lends itself to a genuinely progressive form of nationalist politics. It provides a lens through which we can understand the linguicidal nature of our present social regimes and provides an impetus to organise against them. If the national language dies, so with it does the nation. While not a panacea to the problems the revolutionary left face in the small-nation, it provides a material analysis of the conditions of nationality and an urgent call for the defense of the national language. A turn to linguistic nationalism is not simply accurate from a social scientific perspective – it is a progressive, agitationally valuable and fundamentally proletarian analysis. One that the Marxist of the small-nation desperately requires.
* During the development of this piece it was raised that the argument that no nation speaks more than one language may be confusing. It was decided that a brief aside was required to address this point.
The statement “There is no nation which at one and the same time speaks several languages” originates from Stalin in ‘Marxism and the National Question’. It suggests that due to the definition of the nation being so tied to the national language, that there can be no plurilingual nations. Nations are material groupings of people based on a set of shared characteristics (common territory, language, economic life and culture) so it stands that a people without a common language is not therefore a nation. It is helpful to examine some suggested counter-examples to illustrate this analysis.
Nigeria is a state within whose territory are speakers of more than five hundred indigenous languages. Nigeria, however, is not a nation. A nation is a grouping of people with the aforementioned shared characteristics. A state is a tool of social organisation within a territory intended to facilitate governance, and in particular the dominance of one class over the tools of governance. While this author does not have the information by which to assess which people groups in the state of Nigeria constitute nations, Nigeria itself does not constitute one. Rather, it is a plurinational state – a state composed of many nations.
China is a similar case. While the most spoken language within the state is ‘modern standard Chinese’ or Putonghua, it is not the sole language spoken within the territory. Putonghua is the official language of the nation – itself a part of a family of dialects or languages all written in Hanyu but spoken in wildly different forms. Outside of this language family/group, there are more than three hundred indigenous languages used in communities across the state. While speakers of Putonghua, or possibly the dialects/languages written in Hanyu, could be said to constitute a nation, this nation would not encompass all of China. Rather, China is also a plurinational state.
Finally, the term ‘country’ is often used interchangeably with ‘nation’ and ‘state’ outside Marxist political discourse. While a nation and a state have firm definitions in Marxist analysis, this author knows of no scientific definition of a ‘country’. The term, therefore, is imprecise and tends to be avoided in scientific Marxist analysis as a way to prevent confusion.
- This is not to say that race does not exist as a sociological phenomenon, but that there is no evolutionary/genetic basis to race. Races are socially invented categories whose boundaries shift and change depending on the context and principally on the needs of the most powerful class in the context of study. While the concept of race has some bearing on the development of national consciousness in specific contexts (for example, amongst the descendants of African slaves in the Americas) it is not the material base from which national consciousness develops. Rather it is a product of that material base. ↩︎
- Stalin, J. V., Marxism and the National and Colonial Question, Moscow: Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R, 1916.
↩︎ - Lenin, V. I., ‘The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up’, Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata, No. 1, Moscow: Sbornik Sotsial Demokrata, 1916.
“Big-nation” is use here in the same sense as it is employed by Lenin, to refer to nations who have state control over territories composed also of “small-nations” whose national questions have yet to be resolved. It has been used in lieu of a term like “imperialist” or “imperialised” as that implies an economic relationship between the nations in question that isn’t necessarily the case. For example, the relationship between the state administered from Dublin and global capital is far more complex than to just refer to it as “imperialised”, but it is undeniable that the Irish national question remains unresolved and that the Irish nation hasn’t been able to assert complete sovereignty over its national territory, making it unquestionably a “small-nation” and Britain a “big-nation”.
↩︎ - Stalin, J.V., Marxism and the Problems of Linguistics, Moscow: Foreign Languages Press, 1950 ↩︎
- Stalin, J. V., Marxism and the National and Colonial Question, Moscow: Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R, 1916. ↩︎
