The National Question And The Class Struggle

"The National Question and the Class Struggle" from Dov Ber Borochov. Marxist-Zionist writer and leader (1881-1917).

Provocative writings on the question of national self-determination and its relationship with socialism.

Available for the first time in English, this book examines and reinterprets class struggle within Marx and Engels’ thought. As Losurdo argues, class struggle is often misunderstood as exclusively the struggle of the poor against the rich, of the humble against the powerful. It is an interpretation that is dear to populism, one that supposes a binary logic that closes its eyes to complexity and inclines towards the celebration of poverty as a place of moral excellence. This book, however, shows the theory of class struggle is a general theory of social conflict. Each time, the most adverse social conflicts are intertwined in different ways. A historical situation always emerges with specific and unique characteristics that necessitate serious examination, free of schematic and biased analysis. Only if it breaks away from populism can Marxism develop the ability to interpret and change the world.

Until now, The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy was the only remaining work of classical Marxism not fully translated into English. First published in German in 1907, this seminal text has been cited in countless discussions at nationalism, from the writings of Lenin to Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities. The issues Bauer addressed almost a century ago still challenge current debates on diversity and minority rights. In this remarkably prophetic text, Bauer foreshadowed current ethnic conflicts in the Balkans and in the former Soviet Union and advocated an early concept of multiculturalism. Attempting to reconcile Marxism with nationalism, Bauer called for a system of self-determination for ethnic communities in which extensive autonomy would be granted within a confederal, multicultural state -- Bauer's words, a "United States of Europe", with remarkable similarities to the contemporary European Union.