FROM COSMOPOLITANISM TO NATIONALISM: AN INTERPRETIVE HISTORY OF MARXIAN THEORIES OF NATIONALISM AND SUPRANATIONALISM

The national question is among the perennial issues of Marxism. Numerous studies have considered this question from a programmatic perspective. This study analyzes the theoretical bases of the approaches of several schools of Marxian thought to the national question and, more broadly, to the feasible and desirable scope of human association.; Contrary to many interpretations which characterize classical Marxism as internationalist or nationalist, this study concludes that Marx's thought was generally consistent with earlier cosmopolitan schools of political thought. Like Stoic and Enlightenment cosmopolitanism, Marx's philosophy aimed at the establishment of an unimpeded unity between the human individual and his species. For Marx, the nation-state was a capitalist superstructural barrier which interferred with humanity's full realization. Marx concluded that, like its capitalist base, the nation-state must be abolished if mankind were to realize the cosmopolitan end toward which world history aimed.; Marxian cosmopolitanism was reinforced by the theories of Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky. Both accorded the nation-state little value in revolutionary praxis and saw revolution culminating only in global, species unity.; Leninism represented a retreat from Marxian cosmopolitanism. Recognizing that national and state differences would continue long after socialism's world victory, Lenin ultimately accepted federation as a feasible mode of socialist international organization. This was an internationalist, rather than a cosmopolitan, solution to the national question, since it admitted the enduring character of nation-states and sought to fashion organizational means of muting international anarchy.; Antonio Gramsci's approach echoed Lenin's internationalist stance. For Gramsci, revolutionary praxis dictated that the proletariat's international imperatives be balanced with its practical need to achieve hegemony in particular national contexts.; Since Lenin, nationalist themes have predominated in Marxian thought. Stalinism was an "integral" form of nationalism which harnessed nationalism and national particularity in the service of the central state. Maoism was a "developmental" variety of nationalism whose central goal was the achievement of nationhood. Mao cast the nation as a revolutionary actor, and effectively elevated nation over class. Contemporary Soviet and "Eurocommunist" approaches to the national question are also essentially nationalist, although the latter contains elements of European regionalism.