Differences On National Self-Determination Between Rosa Luxemburg And Lenin

Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg had debated three times on the right of "National Self-Determination",according the question whether to rebuild the independent Poland.The common background they faced,included the formation of the history of the world under imperialism,the criticism to revisionism and the concern on the realist socialist movement,which made them constantly focused on that issue.Their different background mainly related to the experience of Rosa Luxemburg in the Western capitalist countries and the practice of Lenin in the authoritarian countries of the East,which led to their divergence.Their general differences are:what Rosa Luxemburg faced with was how to deal with the imperialist world system,so that she analyzed the national questions in the paradigm of political and economic criticism and the overall dialectic,emphasizing the national issues' obedience and subordination to objective law and the proletarian revolutionary;what Lenin needed to answer was how to overthrow the dictatorship of the Russian government,and he used the methods of political science and contradictory dialectic,more emphasizing on the use of various opportunities to mobilize the various forces to reverse the passive situation.In the first debate on the basic question of the right of national self-determination,Rosa Luxemburg argued that the puny nations in the era of imperialism could not achieve national independence,and it lacked of reality to reach independence under the imperialist era which opted to national integration and the imperialist state had a strong strength.By dividing the two capitalist times,Lenin pointed out that the particularity of Russia was that it still faced the task of bourgeois democratic revolution and the strong separation tendency of ethnic minorities under the dictatorship,therefore he thought that the right of national self-determination can benefit for the best class struggle.In the second debate on the possibility of a national war in the era of imperialism,Rosa Luxemburg argued that the so-called national war was merely an imperialist war,which represented the interests of the bourgeoisie,so we should call on the proletariat to seize leadership.While Lenin thought national movements in the colonies and workers' movements were consistent,and national war can fight against imperialist.Finally,Lenin summed up imperialism as a new form of national oppression,emphasized the particularity of the Russian revolution and the importance of national self-determination,and tried to distinguish it from nationalism.In the reflection of the Russian revolution,Rosa Luxemburg predicted that the right of national self-determination would have fallen into the hands of nationalism and hindered the proletarian revolution once they got so-called national independence,which finally became the historical fact.The inspiration of this argument is that Marxists must oppose the ideology of nationalism,recognize the essence of imperialism,and seize leadership in order to promote the cohesion of oppressed nations among different peoples.