225. The transformation of all nationally-based organizations under the influence of globalization and the political consequences of the dissolution of the Soviet Union required the International Committee of the Fourth International to reconsider the Marxist-Trotskyist approach to the national question and the right to self-determination. Lenin had defended the right to self-determination as a means of achieving working class unity against national oppression. Nearly a hundred years ago, he argued that this right was valid mainly in countries where capitalism was just developing and in colonies and semi-colonies. Moreover, contrary to the falsifications of the post-World War II Stalinists and Pabloites, the working class was not obliged to support any national movement. At the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920, Lenin summarized the Marxist point of view that guides the approach of the ICFI, stating:

As the conscious expression of the proletarian class struggle to shake off the yoke of the bourgeoisie, the communist party, in accordance with its chief task—which is to fight bourgeois democracy and expose its falseness and hypocrisy—should not advance abstract and formal principles on the national question, but should undertake first of all a precise analysis of the given environment, historical and above all economic; secondly, it should specifically distinguish the interests of the oppressed classes, of the workers and the exploited, from the general concept of so-called national interests, which signify in fact the interests of the ruling class; thirdly, it should as precisely distinguish the oppressed, dependent nations, unequal in rights, from the oppressing, exploiting nations with full rights, to offset the bourgeois-democratic lies which conceal the colonial and financial enslavement of the vast majority of the world’s population by a small minority of the wealthiest and most advanced capitalist countries that is characteristic of the epoch of finance capital and imperialism.^[1]

226. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, national movements such as the LTTE in Sri Lanka and the PLO and PKK in the Middle East abandoned their anti-imperialist pretensions as they sought accommodation with the great powers on the basis of offering “their” working class as a source of competitive and cheap labor. At the same time, new separatist tendencies were emerging in Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the former Soviet Republics, as well as in Asia, Latin America and Africa, openly seeking the support of the great powers. The ICFI noted that the development of globalization provided “an objective impulse for a new type of nationalist movement, seeking the dismemberment of existing states.”

Globally-mobile capital has given smaller territories the ability to link themselves directly to the world market. Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan have become the new models of development. A small coastal enclave, possessing adequate transportation links, infrastructure and a supply of cheap labor may prove a more attractive base for multinational capital than a larger country with a less productive hinterland.^[2]

227. The International Committee insisted that it was necessary, in the interests of the international unity of the working class, to take an extremely critical, and even hostile, attitude toward separatist movements. The dogmatic repetition of the slogan, “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination,” was not a substitute for a concrete historical, socio-economic, and political analysis of national demands. This was all the more essential at a time when contemporary national-separatist movements generally were characterized by socio-economic and political perspectives that were blatantly reactionary. Comparing national movements in different historical periods, the ICFI wrote:

In India and China, the national movements posed the progressive task of unifying disparate peoples in a common struggle against imperialism—a task which proved unrealizable under the leadership of the national bourgeoisie. This new form of nationalism promotes separatism along ethnic, linguistic and religious lines, with the aim of dividing up existing states for the benefit of local exploiters. Such movements have nothing to do with a struggle against imperialism, nor do they in any sense embody the democratic aspirations of the masses of oppressed. They serve to divide the working class and divert the class struggle into ethno-communal warfare.^[3]

228. The past decades have proven the critical importance of the ICFI’s defense of proletarian internationalism against bourgeois nationalism on the basis of the Theory of Permanent Revolution. Countless pseudo-left organizations around the world have turned into openly pro-imperialist political tendencies in the name of defending the “right to self-determination.” One of the sharpest examples of this is seen in the glorification by these pseudo-left tendencies of Kurdish nationalism in the Middle East, which has become a proxy force for the US and European imperialist powers. Rejecting the pro-imperialist program of Kurdish nationalism, the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi uncompromisingly opposes the state oppression of the Kurdish people and defends their basic democratic and cultural rights. The only way to realize the democratic aspirations of the Kurdish people and other oppressed masses in the region is to unite the working class in the revolutionary struggle against imperialism and all reactionary capitalist powers in the region to establish the Socialist Federation of the Middle East.