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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2009
Since developments of the last century increasingly involved the political emergence of ethnic and national minorities within polyglot empires, the concern of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels with nationalities is not surprising. It was they, in fact, who claimed a “scientific” basis for advocating revolution and who asked the important question: “What is the relationship between nationalist aspirations and social revolution?”
The authors of the few works in English about the Marxist view of nationality tend to take a simplistic approach to this complex issue. Treating Marx's and Engels' ideas as though they were static has led to an interpretation portraying Marx and Engels as mere revolutionary nationalists. But although it avoids the complexities of a dynamic treatment of a problem in intellectual history, such an interpretation not only stumbles into oversimplification but it also, and almost unavoidably, misses one of the most novel interpretations of the European nationalities question in the mid-nineteenth century.
An accurate analysis of Marxist ideas on the nationality issue can be made only in the context of Marx's and Engels' materialist view of history and with reference to the actual political upheavals in which Marx and Engels themselves participated and which colored their perceptions. This combination of ideology and experience evolved, slowly, within the Marxist framework into a set of clear criteria on nationality.
1 The latest such interpretation may be found in the first two chapters of Bertram, Wolfe, Marxism: One Hundred Years in the Life of a Doctrine (New York: The Dial Press, 1965).Google Scholar
2 Friedrich, Engels, “Der Status Quo in Deutschland,” Karl, Marx and Friedrich, Engels, Werke (39 vols., Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1961–1968), Vol. IV, p. 50.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., p. 51.
4 See Marx, and Engels, , Werke, Vol. V, p. 42.Google Scholar
5 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “Reden über Polen,” in ibid., Vol. IV, pp. 414–417.
6 Ibid., p. 417.
7 I suspect that when Marx and Engels called for the liberation of oppressed peoples in the 1840's they probably meant their liberation from economic exploitation and not the attainment of national independence. I must admit, however, that I have found no direct textual evidence to support this interpretation.
8 Friedrich, Engels, “Der Anfang des Endes in Österreich,” Marx, and Engels, , Werke, Vol. IV, p. 505.Google Scholar
9 Ibid., pp. 506–507.
10 Ibid., p. 510.
11 Ibid., p. 508. At this time Marx and Engels regarded Austria as an empire comprising several potentially viable nations. Engels did not make normative differentiations between them.
12 See especially Werner, Conze (ed.), Die polnische Frage (Gravenhage: Mouton & Co., 1961), p. 17.Google Scholar
13 Friedrich, Engels, “Der magyarische Kampfi” Marx, and Engels, , Werke, Vol. VI, pp. 165–176.Google Scholar
14 Ibid., p. 170.
15 Eugen Alexis Schwanbeck (1821–1850) was a journalist and contributor to the Kölnische Zeitung (1847–1849), a middle-class liberal journal.
16 Friedrich, Engels, “Die ‘Kolnische Zeitung’ über den magyarischen Kampf,” Marx, and Engels, , Werke, Vol. VI, pp. 303–304.Google Scholar
17 “But the great Schwanbeck is certainly not obliged to know that the largest part of the Hungarian nobility… is composed of mere proletarians whose aristocratic privilege lies in their exemption from corporal punishment.” Ibid., p. 304.
18 Friedrich, Engels, “Ungarn,” Marx, and Engels, , Werke, Vol. VI, p. 507.Google Scholar
19 Before reaching any definitive conclusions about the evidence available to Engels, one should carefully examine the articles in Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung that were not written by Marx or Engels but which may have been influential sources of information for them. Unfortunately, such articles are not included in Marx and Engels' Werke and were not available to me at the time I wrote this article.
20 Such a distinction, in fact, did not appear until some time later when Marx and Engels became extremely disillusioned with the “democratic institutions” of the Second French Empire.
21 Engels, “Ungarn,” p. 513.
22 Like Marx, Engels regarded Vienna as the fulcrum of social revolution in Central Europe. See Friedrich, Engels, “Revolution und Konterrevolution in Deutschland,” Marx, and Engels, , Werke, Vol. VIII, pp. 35–37 Google Scholar; and Friedrich Engels, “Revolution in Wien,” ibid., Vol. V, p. 417.
23 See especially Engels, “Der Anfang des Endes in Österreich,” p. 510.
24 Engels, “Ungarn,” p. 513.
25 Karl, Marx, “Sieg der Konterrevolution zu Wien,” Marx and Engels, Werke, Vol. V, p. 455.Google Scholar
26 Ibid., p. 457.
27 Engels, “Der magyarische Kampf,” pp. 172–173.
28 Friedrich, Engels, “Der demokratische Panslawismus,” Marx, and Engels, , Werke, Vol. VI, p. 275.Google Scholar
29 Ibid., p. 275.
30 Ibid., p. 278.
31 Ibid., pp. 273–276.
32 Wolfe, Marxism: One Hundred Years in the Life of a Doctrine, pp. 30–42.
33 Engels, “Der demokratische Panslawismus,” p. 277.
34 Wolfe, Marxism: One Hundred Years in the Life of a Doctrine, pp. 39–40.
35 See ante, p. 5.
36 Engels, “Der demokratische Panslawismus,” p. 281. The italics are mine. See also ibid., pp. 279–280.
37 Friedrich, Engels, “Der Krieg in ltalien und Ungarn,” Marx, and Engels, , Werke, Vol. VI, p. 382.Google Scholar
38 Engels, “Der demokratische Panslawismus,” p. 286.
39 Engels, “Der Anfang des Endes in Osterreich,” p. 509.
40 Friedrich, Engels, “Der Prager Aufstand,” Marx, and Engels, , Werke, Vol. V, p. 81.Google Scholar
41 Ibid., p. 82.
42 Friedrich, Engels, “Demokratischer Charakter des Aufstandes,” Marx, and Engels, , Werke, Vol. V, p. 108.Google Scholar
43 As quoted in Taylor, A. J. P., The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809–1918 (2nd ed., New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 70.Google Scholar
44 Karl, Marx, “Die neuesten Nachrichten aus Wien, Berlin und Paris,” Marx, and Engels, , Werke, Vol. V, pp. 453–457.Google Scholar
45 Engels, “Der magyarische Kampf,” p. 173. The italics are mine.
46 Engels, “Revolution und Konterrevolution in Deutschland,” p. 50.
47 Karl, Marx and Friedrich, Engels, “Programme der radikal-demokratischen Partei und der Linken,” Marx, and Engels, , Werke, Vol. V, p. 94.Google Scholar
48 See especially Engels, “Der Prager Aufstand,” p. 82; as well as his “Neue Politik in Posen,” Marx and Engels, Werke, Vol. V, p. 94.
49 See especially Wolfe, Marxism: One Hundred Years in the Life of a Doctrine, p. 25.
50 Karl, Marx and Friedrich, Engels, “Die auswartige deutsche Politik und die letzten Ereignisse zu Prag,” Marx, and Engels, , Werke, Vol. V, p. 202.Google Scholar
51 See Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “Die russische Note,” ibid., pp. 293–299.
52 See especially Engels, “Der demokratische Panslawismus,” pp. 270–271.
53 Engels, “Der magyarische Kampf,” p. 176. See also Karl, Marx, “Die standrechtliche Beseitigung der ‘Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung,’” Marx, and Engels, , Werke, Vol. VI, p. 506.Google Scholar
54 Engels, “Der magyarische Kampf,” p. 172.
55 Ibid., p. 171.
56 It should be noted, however, that the Poles were excluded from such a category because, unlike the other Slavs, they desired national independence and opposed Russia. For these reasons, they were necessarily progressive. See ibid., p. 169.
57 Ibid., p. 168.
58 Engels, “Der demokratische Panslawismus,” p. 279.
59 Ibid., p. 276.
60 Friedrich, Engels, “Deutschland und der Panslawismus,” Marx, and Engels, , Werke, Vol. XI, p. 195.Google Scholar
61 Ibid., pp. 193–194.
62 Ibid., p. 197.
63 Friedrich, Engels, “Was soil aus der europäischen Türkei werden?”, Marx, and Engels, , Werke, Vol. IX, pp. 34–35.Google Scholar
64 Ibid., p. 34. In his “Die türkische Frage,” Engels attributed the growth of trade in the Ottoman empire to the Slavic and Greek bourgeoisie. See Marx, and Engels, , Werke, Vol. IX, p. 27.Google Scholar