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Balance sheet of 70 years of "national liberation" struggles

A three part series that evaluates the concrete results for the working class and the populations concerned, of 70 years of struggles for "national liberation" struggles.
  • How the revolutionary wave of 1917-23 was weakened by support for "national liberation" movements

    The Kurdish tragedy is the latest demonstration of the bloody barbarity brought about by so-called 'national liberation' struggles. The United States, Great Britain, Turkey, Iran, all the different imperialist protagonists who brought about the outrage of the Gulf War, encouraged the Kurds in one way or the other to rise up in armed insurrection for their 'national liberation'. Now we can see how they left Saddam Hussein to crush them and cast them into exile...

    International Review no.66 - 3rd quarter 1991
    22-Jul-1991
  • "National liberation" in the 20th century: a strong link in the chain of imperialism
    Marx said that the truth of a theory is demonstrated in practice. For the proletariat, 70 years of bitter experience have clearly resolved the debate on the national question in favour of the position developed by Rosa Luxemburg and then by the groups of the Communist Left, especially Bilan, Internationalisme and our Current. In the first part of this article we saw how support for "national liberation of the people" played a crucial role in the defeat of the first international proletarian revolutionary wave between 1917 and 1923 (see International Review no 66). In this second part we will see that the "national liberation" struggles have been an instrument of the imperialist wars and confrontations that have wracked the planet for the last 70 years.
    International Review no.68 - 1st quarter 1992
    22-Jan-1992
  • Balance sheet of 70 years of 'national liberation' struggles, Part 3

    In the first article of the series (International Review 66) we demonstrated how ‘national liberation’ acted as a deadly poison for the international revolutionary wave of 1917-23; in the second part (IR 68) we showed how ‘national libera­tion’ wars and the new states form inseparable cogs of impe­rialism and imperialist wars. In this third part we want to demonstrate the tragic economic and social disaster caused by the existence of the 150 nations created in the 20th cen­tury.

     

    International Review no.69 - 2nd quarter 1992
    22-Apr-1992