While their attempts to understand the workings of capitalism led them to the conclusion that the advanced societies of Western Europe were those most likely to be the setting for a successful socialist revolution, Marx and Engels by no means ignored developments outside this region. Indeed, given the configurations of international politics in their time, plus their conception of capitalism as a universalising system, they believed that some of the forces working for change in less advanced regions could even affect the prospects of a proletarian revolution in Western Europe itself. This book, first published in 1980, traces the development of Marx and Engels’ attitudes towards, and relations with, the principal national movements of their time. It deals with their responses to such movements in areas as diverse as Ireland and India, Poland and China, and Russia and the United States, as well as in many other regions. Many of Max and Engels’ most significant statements on the national question were made in their journalism, occasional addresses and private correspondence – sources not always readily accessible to, or even known by, some of their more immediate successors. Subsequent publication of this previously-dispersed material has enabled a more coherent picture of their ideas on the subject to be drawn. Marx and Engels believed that national aspirations and the cause of socialism did not always go hand in hand and each national struggle had to be examined on its merits and judged according to whether its success would retard or enhance the prospects of a socialist revolution. Based on a wide range of sources, this study examines an important, yet neglected, area of Marx and Engels’ ideas and activities, and indicates the criteria by which they determined their attitudes at different times to a variety of national movements at work in four continents.

While their attempts to understand the workings of capitalism led them to the conclusion that the advanced societies of Western Europe were those most likely to be the setting for a successful socialist revolution, Marx and Engels by no means ignored developments outside this region. Indeed, given the configurations of international politics in their time, plus their conception of capitalism as a universalising system, they believed that some of the forces working for change in less advanced regions could even affect the prospects of a proletarian revolution in Western Europe itself. This book, first published in 1980, traces the development of Marx and Engels' attitudes towards, and relations with, the principal national movements of their time. It deals with their responses to such movements in areas as diverse as Ireland and India, Poland and China, and Russia and the United States, as well as in many other regions. Many of Max and Engels' most significant statements on the national question were made in their journalism, occasional addresses and private correspondence - sources not always readily accessible to, or even known by, some of their more immediate successors. Subsequent publication of this previously-dispersed material has enabled a more coherent picture of their ideas on the subject to be drawn. Marx and Engels believed that national aspirations and the cause of socialism did not always go hand in hand and each national struggle had to be examined on its merits and judged according to whether its success would retard or enhance the prospects of a socialist revolution. Based on a wide range of sources, this study examines an important, yet neglected, area of Marx and Engels' ideas and activities, and indicates the criteria by which they determined their attitudes at different times to a variety of national movements at work in four continents.

Really Existing Nationalisms challenges the conventional view that Marx and Engels lacked the theoretical resources needed to understand nationalism. It argues that the two thinkers had a much better explanatory grasp of national phenomena than is usually supposed, and that the reasoning behind their policy towards specific national movements was often subtle and sensitive to the ethical issues at stake. Instead of offering an insular 'Marxian' account of nationalism, the book identifies arguments in Marx and Engels' writings that can help us to think more clearly about national identity and conflict today. These arguments are located in a distinctive theory of politics, which enabled the authors to analyse the relations between nationalism and other social movements and to discriminate between democratic, outward-looking national programmes and authoritarian, ethnocentric nationalism. Erica Benner suggest that this approach improves on accounts which stress the `independent' force of nationality over other concerns, and on those that fail to analyse the complex motives of nationalist actors. She concludes by criticising these 'methodological nationalist' assumptions and 'post-nationalist' views about the future role of nationalism, showing how some of Marx and Engels' arguments can yield a better understanding of the national movements that have emerged in the wake of 'really existing socialism'. This new edition includes a new introduction.

This study examines the relationship between the two dominant ideologies which emerged in the 19th century: Karl Marx's communism and Friedrich List's theory of nationalism. List was the first economist to be studied seriously by Marx. Three years before publication of the "Communist Manifesto" Karl Marx began work on a critique of a movement that was gaining popularity as a challenge to capitalism - nationalism, as put forth by the German economist Friedrich List. Long regarded as a major cultural and political force in 19th-century Europe, nationalism was in fact to become directly involved in the conflict between capitalism and socialism, offering an appealing alternative to capitalism's "New World Order" - the doctrine of Free Trade - and socialism's call for a worldwide unification of the workers against the bourgeoisie. In this original new work Professor Szporluk offers a major reinterpretation of Marxism's historical development - one that recognises nationalism as the third contender on the battlefield where Marxism met capitalism. A bold new interpretation of Marx's intellectual biography, showing how the history of Marx and Marxism is to a great extent the story of their confrontation with nationalism before 1848.

According to Nimtz, no two people contributed more to the struggle for democracy in the nineteenth century than Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Presenting the first major study of the two thinkers in the past twenty years and the first since the collapse of the Soviet Union, this book challenges many widely held views about their democratic credentials and their attitudes and policies on the peasantry, the importance of national self-determination, the struggle for women's equality, their so-called Eurocentric bias, political and party organizing, and the possibility for socialist revolution in an overwhelmingly peasant and underdeveloped country like late-nineteenth-century Russia.