we seek beyond history
for a new and more possible meeting.
Audre Lorde
The image of two men aspiring to absolute national power and imperial expansion meeting to discuss the parcelling out of a country invaded by one of them, with the words “Pursuing Peace” written on the wall behind, induces all manner of reactions, none of which are pleasant.
If we could only laugh at the ubuesque buffoonery of these two, the horror would be easier to bear and we could perhaps, with Alfred Jarry, show our “contempt for the cruelty and stupidity of the world by making of one’s life a poem of incoherence and absurdity”. Yet the violence of their deeds is too great and the number of their sycophants too many, for them to be simply laughed off stage. And their pleased demeanour augurs ill.
For some commentators, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israeli massacre of the Palestinians of Gaza – to refer but to these two genocides in which Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are directly involved –, sounds the death knell of the “international rules-based order” constructed at the end of WWII. And if this “order” was in large part an “organised disorder” for the benefit of the political and economically powerful, its “rules” (e.g., international agreements, treaties, laws) and “organisations” (e.g., the United Nations and affiliated institutions) could sometimes be used by the “weak” against the “strong” (e.g., the dismantling of the European colonial empires after the war).
If the “international community” and “international law” are in part fictions, they are fictions that were in part inspired by the history (and likewise fear) of modern revolutions, fictions that have been used on many occasions by many different sides in multiple conflicts. And if the “international rules-based order” was created by the victorious military powers of WWII, between themselves, their relations have never been without conflict and consequently, and again in part, their control over the rules of this order was never total.
This may all seem terribly obvious, but the obvious sometimes needs to be repeated because there are those among the “Left” – anarchist and others – who would simply dismiss any concern with this post-war international order as irrelevant to the need to destroy capitalism. “Good riddance!” to it and all of the violence that it justified and/or sought to cover over. And though their aims differ radically, the Left here would join its voice to the radical nationalist Right that also desires to see the demise of “globalism” and its sustaining institutions.
We are not thereby defending the “international order”, but only pointing to the fact – indeed, we take it as one – that a world of unrestrained imperialist-economic competition today will immediately destroy the lives of very many millions and, in the longer term, the very conditions for the possibility of not only any fulfilling human life, but of human life as such.
The “Left” was once “globalist”, or more properly, “internationalist”, and however flawed the latter idea was, it still provided a horizon for a human community – for anarchists, a collection of interrelated federations of communities – beyond the violence of militarised nationalism.
A contemporary internationalism is urgent, for any human community that aspires to create, at whatever scale, non-oppressive and non-exploitive relations, will be even more threatened, politically and ecologically, by the new “Putin-Trump (etc.) world order”. This must not however be an internationalism limited to rehabilitating and defending the so-called “international rules-based order”, with all of its violent inequalities and state-centred norms and institutions. But we cannot ignore this latter either, for amidst its ruins, there are the fragments of the traditions of the oppressed which, embedded in the ideas and structures of that order, helped to engender and sustain it. “Our” task then is to blast out of this brief history and order forms of life that were never reducible to post-WWII international law and institutions.
For the anarchist, the horizon has to be an internationalism of justice, with all communities, created in the endless plurality of means-ends, histories and geographies, addressing and dealing with each other in equality and freedom. And for this to be imagined, a far more nuanced thinking about where we are now – Audre Lorde’s “master’s house” –, with all of the political limits of nationalism, is called for.
This may all sound vague, “unrealistic” and/or foolishly “utopian”. So be it. But then perhaps an Alfred Jarry “poem of incoherence and absurdity” is precisely what is called for in our dark times.
With all of this in mind, we share below the first of two articles addressing the history and politics of anarchism in relationship to nationalism, decolonialism and multiculturalism.
Six Errors Made by Anarchists About National Self-Determination
Wayne Price
There are various debates among anarchists. One of the biggest controversies is over “national self-determination”/“national liberation”/“anti-imperialism.” This debate has become particularly intense over the Ukrainian-Russian war and the Palestinian-Israeli war. Some anarchists, such as myself, have supported the Ukrainians and the Palestinians on the basis of national self-determination. Many other anarchists have rejected support for the Ukrainians—and some, support for the Palestinians. They deny any right of national self-determination. Some even deny the reality of imperialism; they are anti-anti-imperialists.
I write of anarchists, but the same errors are true of libertarian-autonomous Marxists. Personally I identify as a revolutionary anarchist-socialist, in the tradition of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, and the anarcho-syndicalists and anarchist-communists. I think that many anarchists reject national self-determination and liberation due to various errors and misunderstandings, often out of ignorance. I will explore what I regard as six such fallacies held by many anarchists.
Errors:
(1) National self-determination was invented by Lenin. Therefore it is Leninist, not anarchist.
The oppression of nations is not something first noticed by V.I. Lenin. What is it? An anarchist writes, “National domination or imperialism is defined by the imposition of social force [by] the dominant classes of one state on the entire population of another state or of a nation-race (people or homeland) for the benefit of those who impose themselves…when a people…is the victim of economic dependence and/or exploitation.” (Correa 2024; p. 26)
As a result, the freedom of oppressed nations means liberation from this domination and exploitation. It means the ability to decide whether to be independent or merged with another country. It is the freedom to decide its own political and economic system. Lenin indeed advocated this (how he betrayed it once in power is another matter).
However, this “right” had first been part of the classical democratic program of the capitalist-democratic revolution. This includes the English revolution, the American revolution, the French revolution, Latin American revolutions, and so on. That program included freedom of speech, of assembly, of religion, of the press, the right to bear arms, trial by jury, land to those who work it, election of officials, equality of all before the law (regardless of gender, race, or religion)—and self-determination for all peoples.
In the First World War, the leader of U.S. imperialism, “the American President Woodrow Wilson had declared, in his celebrated ‘Fourteen Points’…that every nation should be able to determine its own future, free from interference by others….This applied to the Poles, the Czechs, and the Yugoslavs…” among others (Evans 2004; p. 63) Wilson was certainly not a Leninist. He was, however, an imperialist hypocrite raising national self-determination.
Capitalist states have never lived up to their program. They have had to be forced to implement it by popular pressure and revolts. In our epoch of capitalist decline, carrying out this program has fallen to the left. This is why classical democratic demands have so often become misidentified with Leninism—or anarchism.
Some varieties of Leninism (such as Maoism) and other authoritarian leftisms, have come to treat oppressed nations as national blocs. They overlook class and other divisions within nations. They have treated the contradiction between imperialist and oppressed nations as the fundamental conflict in global capitalism, rather than class. They have often uncritically supported national dictators, so long as these were against the U.S.
However, this classless and nationalist position is not an inevitable interpretation of national self-determination. This is demonstrated by anarchists and others who advocate revolutionary opposition by workers and oppressed people against national rulers as well as all imperialists. (How Leninism devolved into this non-class position is another story.)
(2) Anarchists don’t believe in national self-determination.
The false assumption here is that anarchists, as internationalists, do not recognize nations, regard all nations as nation-states (that is, regard nations as synonymous with their states), and reject nations because they have class (and other) internal conflicts and we are on the side of the working class against the capitalist minority. It is ignorantly assumed that all anarchists have always denied self-determination.
In fact many revolutionary anarchists have supported national self-determination. Mikhail Bakunin is regarded as the “founder” of revolutionary anarchism. He wrote,
“Nationality, like individuality, is a natural fact. It denotes the inalienable right of individuals, groups, association and regions to their own way of life….I will always champion the cause of oppressed nationalities struggling to liberate themselves from the domination of the state.” (Dolgoff 1980; p. 401) (By “natural fact” he does not mean it is biological but that it is an unplanned historical development. The “state” in this case is the dominating foreign state.)
Bakunin declared, “Every people weak or strong, every province, every commune has the absolute right to be free, autonomous, to live and govern themselves according to their particular interests and needs.” He distinguished between the “state”, which he opposed, and the people’s “homeland.” He asserted, “The State is not the homeland…. I feel frankly and always, the patriot of all the oppressed homelands.” (Correa 2024; p. 409)
“There is, on the part of different researchers, a minimization of the theme of national and anti-imperialist liberation in Bakunin’s life and work from 1864 onward. Perhaps this is explained…by the fact that these researchers live, in most cases, in the central countries of the North Atlantic axis.” (Correa 2024; p. 307)
Support for national self-determination was stated by Peter Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta, and many other anarchists. (E.g., for Malatesta’s defense of national self-determination, see Price 2022.) Revolutionary anarchists supported India and Ireland against the British empire. They supported national liberation struggles in Eastern Europe, including Poland and Greece. Anarchist anti-imperialists fought in national uprisings in Cuba and Mexico. The anarchist Nestor Makhno led his Ukrainian rebels against Polish, German, and Russian armies, while also fighting off right-wing nationalists. Anarchists led Korean forces in Manchuria against Japan. French anarchists supported Algerian forces against their own government. And so on.
In Daniel Guerin’s Anarchism (1970), he writes, “True internationalism rests on self-determination, which implies the right of secession….Lenin and the early congresses of the [Communist] Third International, adopted this concept from Bakunin….” (p. 67) This goes too far; I doubt that Lenin ever adopted a concept from anarchists, for whose theory he had little regard.
In Bakunin’s words, anarchists “always champion the cause of oppressed nationalities” and are “always the patriot[s] of all the oppressed homelands.” What is distinctive about anarchist support for national liberation is a focus on mobilizing the exploited and oppressed of the nation, instead of looking for unity with the ruling class. And having the goal of a stateless, self-managed, federalized socialism.
(3) “National self-determination,”“national liberation,” and “anti-imperialism” are the same as “nationalism”—which anarchists oppose.
“National self-determination” is a broad goal. the freedom of a people to determine their future. But how will this be achieved? There are various programs. The dominant one has been nationalism. This program calls for the unity of the nation behind its rulers (or would-be rulers). Divisions, especially class divisions, are to be papered over. It does not reach out to the workers in the oppressor country. The goal is to make the national leadership into the new ruling class of its country. This means some variety of capitalism (possibly Stalinist state capitalism). It requires a national state to enforce the power of the nation’s capitalists and their minions.
Anarchist anti-imperialists reject the program of nationalism. We raise a different program to achieve national self-determination. We do not equate nations with their states. Anarchists say that true independence of oppressed nations can only be achieved through opposition by the working class and oppressed of the nation, to both the native ruling class and the foreign oppressor—as part of an international revolution.
Through nationalism, at most the oppressed nation might achieve its own independent state, with its own flag, its own currency, its own police and army, and its own capitalists. But it will still be dominated by the world market, which is ruled by the big capitalist economies. It will still be dominated by the international power politics of the big imperialists, and always under threat of interference or invasion. Only a world revolution can result in real national freedom.
Anarchist-socialists may participate within a movement for national liberation, while fighting for their full program against the nationalists. As internationalists, anarchists have a negative agreement with nationalists. We agree only on what we are both against—imperialist domination of oppressed nations. We disagree on what we are for: a classless, state-less, autonomous country in an international federation of free peoples.
(4) National self-determination is the same as Trotskyism
This is a variant of point (1), since Trotskyism is a variety of Leninism (and therefore of Marxism). It is a charge repeatedly hurled at me, since I used to be an unorthodox Trotskyist. However, I came to see that he and Lenin had established a one-party police-state dictatorship. This laid the basis for Stalin’s mass-murdering totalitarianism. So I rejected Trotskyism for anarchism.
Well, what had Trotsky actually written about national self-determination? In 1938, he wrote the “Transitional Program” for what he hoped to be a new, Fourth, International. Knowing that World War II would soon break out, Trotsky considered it would be another inter-imperialist war, with the workers having no stake in either side.
However it would be different for the oppressed nations. He expected “colonial or semicolonial countries to use the war in order to cast off the yoke of slavery. Their war will be not imperialist but liberating. It will be the duty of the international proletariat to aid the oppressed nations in their war against the oppressors.” (Trotsky 1977; p. 131)
It is possible that another imperialist government—in competition with the one oppressing the rebellious country—might give aid to that country (as the USA has aided Ukraine against Russia). The “Transitional Program” says that revolutionaries should not give support to that “helpful” imperialist state. “The workers of imperialist countries, however, cannot help an anti-imperialist country through their own government….The proletariat of the imperialist country continues to remain in class opposition to its own government and supports the non-imperialist ‘ally’ through its own methods….” (p. 132)
At the same time, “…the proletariat does not in the slightest degree solidarize…with the bourgeois government of the colonial country….It maintains full political independence….Giving aid in a just and progressive war, the revolutionary proletariat wins the sympathy of the workers in the colonies…and increases its ability to help overthrow the bourgeois government in the colonial country.” (p. 132) This is not nationalism but internationalism. “Our basic slogan remains: Workers of the World Unite!” (p. 133) (Existing Trotskyist organizations rarely follow this perspective.)
In other works, Trotsky applied national self-determination to Ukraine. In 1939, he raised the slogan of “A united, free, and independent workers’ and peasants’ Soviet Ukraine,” or simply, “For a Free, Independent, Soviet Ukraine!” He added, “Not the slightest concession to the Ukrainian nationalists, either clerical-reactionary or liberal-pacifist!” (Trotsky 2009)
An anarchist perspective on national self-determination would be pretty much in agreement with the quoted section of the “Transitional Program”—with two very important differences.
(i) Trotsky, like Lenin, was a centralist. They hoped that support for the self-determination of oppressed nations would lead to the voluntary merger of oppressed and oppressor nations into larger, centralized, units, eventually into a centralized world. Anarchists, however, while being internationalists, are also decentralists, regionalists, and pluralists. We cherish a plurality of societies and cultures. Therefore we advocate the federation of peoples, from the bottom up, rather than centralization.
(ii) Like Trotsky, the anarchists’ ultimate goal of supporting a nation’s struggles is to “overthrow the bourgeois government,” in both the imperialist and oppressed countries. For Trotsky, this is to be followed by establishing centralized “workers’ states.” But revolutionary anarchists want to replace all capitalist governments with non-state associations of councils, committees, assemblies, and self-managed organizations. (For further discussion of the relationship of anarchism, Trotskyism, and liberalism, see Price 2020.)
(5) Anarchists support national liberation struggles but do not support national wars waged by (or for) national States.
This is contradictory. Right now all national struggles are waged either by national states (such as Ukraine) or by leaderships which want to set up new national states (such as in Palestine)—with the possible exception of the Kurds’ Rojava. To reject all these wars of liberation is in fact to reject all national self-determination.
Oppressed nations, fighting for independence, have been led either by national governments or those who wish to create them (with themselves in charge). That is the peoples’ misfortune. Further, the workers and farmers and others of these countries are not (yet?) anarchists; they accept (or do not oppose) their states and would-be states leading the struggles. That is their mistake. Believing in national self-determination is to believe that peoples should make their own decisions and learn from their mistakes. It is not for some imperial power to decide for them what is in their interest, nor yet for a minority of anarchists to decide for them.
But between the people and their imperialist or colonial oppressors, anarchists must be on the side of the oppressed and exploited, rather than be neutral—even if they (unfortunately) have states. But we remain political opponents of those states.
When a labor union goes on strike—but one which is “led” by bureaucratic supporters of capitalism and the state—anarchists must not be neutral or opposed to the strike due to its rotten leadership. Instead, we support the strike, because we support the workers. We participate in the strike and raise money for the strike. Meanwhile we try, as best as is possible under the circumstances, to propagandize against the sell-out bureaucrats, to call for greater militancy and internal union democracy, and to advocate revolutionary anarchist-socialism.
This is the same approach that should be used in wars of national liberation.
(6) Anarchists should not support wars of national liberation if the oppressed nation gets aid from other imperialist powers.
The modern world is divided by competing imperialist states as well as between imperialist states and the oppressed nations (of the Global South and Eastern Europe). Naturally imperialists will seek to weaken their competitors by supporting rebellious nations against rival imperialisms. And naturally oppressed nations will seek aid from imperialisms which are opponents of their immediate oppressor (under the rubric “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”).
For example, during World War II, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan gave political and military support to colonies of the British, French, and Dutch Empires and U.S. imperialism. The U.S., on the other side, aided China against Japanese imperialism. During the Cold War, the imperialist Soviet Union aided national rebellions against Western colonialism throughout the world. This included Vietnam, Cuba, and South Africa’s ANC. The U.S. supported Tito’s Yugoslavia when it broke from the Soviet Union. It gave political support to the other European Russian satellites.
Recently, the U.S. (until Trump) gave massive military aid to the Ukrainians. The Palestinian resistance has been mostly armed by Iran, a regional sub-imperialist. The Kurds of Rojava have been armed and aided in an alliance with the U.S.
A nation fighting for its independence surely has the right to get military aid from wherever it can. This is better than being crushed by its mighty opponent. No doubt it will make as many of its own weapons as it can, and will try to capture weapons from the enemy. But an oppressed nation is bound to be poorer and weaker than its imperialist enemy. This does not mean that, say, U.S. radicals should campaign for U.S. bombs for Ukraine (or, hypothetically, for Palestine), but that we support Ukraine’s freedom to get arms from wherever it can. (That would apply whether it had a capitalist state or was a federation of free communes.)
Many anarchists think that Ukraine has long since been overwhelmed by U.S. domination. However, the Ukrainians continue to be the ones fighting and dying against the Russian invaders. It is still their war. If U.S. or European troops take over the war and become the major military force fighting with Russian (and North Korean) troops, then it will have become primarily a war between imperialisms—and no longer to be supported. So far this has not happened and almost certainly will not happen.
While it is justifiable for an invaded nation to take aid from a rival imperialism, it should be careful. Revolutionary anarchists must warn the nation’s workers not to have illusions about the imperial “ally.” “Forewarned is forearmed.” The Great Powers are no lovers of the rights of small countries. They give aid only to further their own nefarious ends. They will turn on their supposed allies in a heartbeat if they think it is in their interest. The Kurds have had that experience time and again. The U.S., under the vile Trump, is currently giving the lie to all U.S. declarations about “defending democracy” in Ukraine.
Conclusion
In Felipe Correa’s brilliant presentation of Bakunin’s revolutionary anarchism, the Brazilian scholar and activist writes, “The defense of internationalism…in no way means abandoning national liberation struggles and anti-imperialism. After all, engagement in these causes does not inevitably imply support for the State since it is not synonymous with nation, race, or homeland….” (2025; p. 406)
“Such are the foundations of anarchist anti-imperialism: it is [working] classist, anti-statist, internationalist, and aims at a new, completely emancipated society. Moreover, like any revolutionary and socialist movement, it must be a mass movement….Anarchist anti-imperialism claims the concomitant end of both national domination and class and state domination in the nation struggling for liberation.” (p. 408)
References
Correa, Felipe (2024). (Trans.: J. Payn). Freedom or Death; The Theory and Practice of Mikhail Bakunin. Montreal/NY: Black Rose Books.
Dolgoff, Sam (1980) (Ed). Bakunin on Anarchism. Montreal: Black Rose Books.
Evans, Richard J. (2004). The Coming of the Third Reich. NY: Penguin Press.
Guerin, Daniel (1970). Anarchism; From Theory to Practice. NY: Monthly Review Press.
Price, Wayne (2020). “Our Morals and Theirs; Means and Ends in Anarchist, Liberal, and
Marxist Morals.” https://www.anarkismo.net/article/31889?search_text=Wayne
Price, Wayne (2022). “Malatesta on War and National Self-Determination.” https://www.anarkismo.net/article/32666?search_text=Wayne
Trotsky, Leon (2009). “Problem of the Ukraine.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/ukraine.html
Trotsky, Leon (1977). The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution. (Eds.: George Breitman & Fred Stanton.) NY: Pathfinder Press.
(Source: anarchistnews.org, 06708/2025)
A meeting between Ubu kings
we seek beyond history
for a new and more possible meeting.
Audre Lorde
The image of two men aspiring to absolute national power and imperial expansion meeting to discuss the parcelling out of a country invaded by one of them, with the words “Pursuing Peace” written on the wall behind, induces all manner of reactions, none of which are pleasant.
If we could only laugh at the ubuesque buffoonery of these two, the horror would be easier to bear and we could perhaps, with Alfred Jarry, show our “contempt for the cruelty and stupidity of the world by making of one’s life a poem of incoherence and absurdity”. Yet the violence of their deeds is too great and the number of their sycophants too many, for them to be simply laughed off stage. And their pleased demeanour augurs ill.
For some commentators, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israeli massacre of the Palestinians of Gaza – to refer but to these two genocides in which Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are directly involved –, sounds the death knell of the “international rules-based order” constructed at the end of WWII. And if this “order” was in large part an “organised disorder” for the benefit of the political and economically powerful, its “rules” (e.g., international agreements, treaties, laws) and “organisations” (e.g., the United Nations and affiliated institutions) could sometimes be used by the “weak” against the “strong” (e.g., the dismantling of the European colonial empires after the war).
If the “international community” and “international law” are in part fictions, they are fictions that were in part inspired by the history (and likewise fear) of modern revolutions, fictions that have been used on many occasions by many different sides in multiple conflicts. And if the “international rules-based order” was created by the victorious military powers of WWII, between themselves, their relations have never been without conflict and consequently, and again in part, their control over the rules of this order was never total.
This may all seem terribly obvious, but the obvious sometimes needs to be repeated because there are those among the “Left” – anarchist and others – who would simply dismiss any concern with this post-war international order as irrelevant to the need to destroy capitalism. “Good riddance!” to it and all of the violence that it justified and/or sought to cover over. And though their aims differ radically, the Left here would join its voice to the radical nationalist Right that also desires to see the demise of “globalism” and its sustaining institutions.
We are not thereby defending the “international order”, but only pointing to the fact – indeed, we take it as one – that a world of unrestrained imperialist-economic competition today will immediately destroy the lives of very many millions and, in the longer term, the very conditions for the possibility of not only any fulfilling human life, but of human life as such.
The “Left” was once “globalist”, or more properly, “internationalist”, and however flawed the latter idea was, it still provided a horizon for a human community – for anarchists, a collection of interrelated federations of communities – beyond the violence of militarised nationalism.
A contemporary internationalism is urgent, for any human community that aspires to create, at whatever scale, non-oppressive and non-exploitive relations, will be even more threatened, politically and ecologically, by the new “Putin-Trump (etc.) world order”. This must not however be an internationalism limited to rehabilitating and defending the so-called “international rules-based order”, with all of its violent inequalities and state-centred norms and institutions. But we cannot ignore this latter either, for amidst its ruins, there are the fragments of the traditions of the oppressed which, embedded in the ideas and structures of that order, helped to engender and sustain it. “Our” task then is to blast out of this brief history and order forms of life that were never reducible to post-WWII international law and institutions.
For the anarchist, the horizon has to be an internationalism of justice, with all communities, created in the endless plurality of means-ends, histories and geographies, addressing and dealing with each other in equality and freedom. And for this to be imagined, a far more nuanced thinking about where we are now – Audre Lorde’s “master’s house” –, with all of the political limits of nationalism, is called for.
This may all sound vague, “unrealistic” and/or foolishly “utopian”. So be it. But then perhaps an Alfred Jarry “poem of incoherence and absurdity” is precisely what is called for in our dark times.
With all of this in mind, we share below the first of two articles addressing the history and politics of anarchism in relationship to nationalism, decolonialism and multiculturalism.
Six Errors Made by Anarchists About National Self-Determination
Wayne Price
There are various debates among anarchists. One of the biggest controversies is over “national self-determination”/“national liberation”/“anti-imperialism.” This debate has become particularly intense over the Ukrainian-Russian war and the Palestinian-Israeli war. Some anarchists, such as myself, have supported the Ukrainians and the Palestinians on the basis of national self-determination. Many other anarchists have rejected support for the Ukrainians—and some, support for the Palestinians. They deny any right of national self-determination. Some even deny the reality of imperialism; they are anti-anti-imperialists.
I write of anarchists, but the same errors are true of libertarian-autonomous Marxists. Personally I identify as a revolutionary anarchist-socialist, in the tradition of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, and the anarcho-syndicalists and anarchist-communists. I think that many anarchists reject national self-determination and liberation due to various errors and misunderstandings, often out of ignorance. I will explore what I regard as six such fallacies held by many anarchists.
Errors:
(1) National self-determination was invented by Lenin. Therefore it is Leninist, not anarchist.
The oppression of nations is not something first noticed by V.I. Lenin. What is it? An anarchist writes, “National domination or imperialism is defined by the imposition of social force [by] the dominant classes of one state on the entire population of another state or of a nation-race (people or homeland) for the benefit of those who impose themselves…when a people…is the victim of economic dependence and/or exploitation.” (Correa 2024; p. 26)
As a result, the freedom of oppressed nations means liberation from this domination and exploitation. It means the ability to decide whether to be independent or merged with another country. It is the freedom to decide its own political and economic system. Lenin indeed advocated this (how he betrayed it once in power is another matter).
However, this “right” had first been part of the classical democratic program of the capitalist-democratic revolution. This includes the English revolution, the American revolution, the French revolution, Latin American revolutions, and so on. That program included freedom of speech, of assembly, of religion, of the press, the right to bear arms, trial by jury, land to those who work it, election of officials, equality of all before the law (regardless of gender, race, or religion)—and self-determination for all peoples.
In the First World War, the leader of U.S. imperialism, “the American President Woodrow Wilson had declared, in his celebrated ‘Fourteen Points’…that every nation should be able to determine its own future, free from interference by others….This applied to the Poles, the Czechs, and the Yugoslavs…” among others (Evans 2004; p. 63) Wilson was certainly not a Leninist. He was, however, an imperialist hypocrite raising national self-determination.
Capitalist states have never lived up to their program. They have had to be forced to implement it by popular pressure and revolts. In our epoch of capitalist decline, carrying out this program has fallen to the left. This is why classical democratic demands have so often become misidentified with Leninism—or anarchism.
Some varieties of Leninism (such as Maoism) and other authoritarian leftisms, have come to treat oppressed nations as national blocs. They overlook class and other divisions within nations. They have treated the contradiction between imperialist and oppressed nations as the fundamental conflict in global capitalism, rather than class. They have often uncritically supported national dictators, so long as these were against the U.S.
However, this classless and nationalist position is not an inevitable interpretation of national self-determination. This is demonstrated by anarchists and others who advocate revolutionary opposition by workers and oppressed people against national rulers as well as all imperialists. (How Leninism devolved into this non-class position is another story.)
(2) Anarchists don’t believe in national self-determination.
The false assumption here is that anarchists, as internationalists, do not recognize nations, regard all nations as nation-states (that is, regard nations as synonymous with their states), and reject nations because they have class (and other) internal conflicts and we are on the side of the working class against the capitalist minority. It is ignorantly assumed that all anarchists have always denied self-determination.
In fact many revolutionary anarchists have supported national self-determination. Mikhail Bakunin is regarded as the “founder” of revolutionary anarchism. He wrote,
“Nationality, like individuality, is a natural fact. It denotes the inalienable right of individuals, groups, association and regions to their own way of life….I will always champion the cause of oppressed nationalities struggling to liberate themselves from the domination of the state.” (Dolgoff 1980; p. 401) (By “natural fact” he does not mean it is biological but that it is an unplanned historical development. The “state” in this case is the dominating foreign state.)
Bakunin declared, “Every people weak or strong, every province, every commune has the absolute right to be free, autonomous, to live and govern themselves according to their particular interests and needs.” He distinguished between the “state”, which he opposed, and the people’s “homeland.” He asserted, “The State is not the homeland…. I feel frankly and always, the patriot of all the oppressed homelands.” (Correa 2024; p. 409)
“There is, on the part of different researchers, a minimization of the theme of national and anti-imperialist liberation in Bakunin’s life and work from 1864 onward. Perhaps this is explained…by the fact that these researchers live, in most cases, in the central countries of the North Atlantic axis.” (Correa 2024; p. 307)
Support for national self-determination was stated by Peter Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta, and many other anarchists. (E.g., for Malatesta’s defense of national self-determination, see Price 2022.) Revolutionary anarchists supported India and Ireland against the British empire. They supported national liberation struggles in Eastern Europe, including Poland and Greece. Anarchist anti-imperialists fought in national uprisings in Cuba and Mexico. The anarchist Nestor Makhno led his Ukrainian rebels against Polish, German, and Russian armies, while also fighting off right-wing nationalists. Anarchists led Korean forces in Manchuria against Japan. French anarchists supported Algerian forces against their own government. And so on.
In Daniel Guerin’s Anarchism (1970), he writes, “True internationalism rests on self-determination, which implies the right of secession….Lenin and the early congresses of the [Communist] Third International, adopted this concept from Bakunin….” (p. 67) This goes too far; I doubt that Lenin ever adopted a concept from anarchists, for whose theory he had little regard.
In Bakunin’s words, anarchists “always champion the cause of oppressed nationalities” and are “always the patriot[s] of all the oppressed homelands.” What is distinctive about anarchist support for national liberation is a focus on mobilizing the exploited and oppressed of the nation, instead of looking for unity with the ruling class. And having the goal of a stateless, self-managed, federalized socialism.
(3) “National self-determination,”“national liberation,” and “anti-imperialism” are the same as “nationalism”—which anarchists oppose.
“National self-determination” is a broad goal. the freedom of a people to determine their future. But how will this be achieved? There are various programs. The dominant one has been nationalism. This program calls for the unity of the nation behind its rulers (or would-be rulers). Divisions, especially class divisions, are to be papered over. It does not reach out to the workers in the oppressor country. The goal is to make the national leadership into the new ruling class of its country. This means some variety of capitalism (possibly Stalinist state capitalism). It requires a national state to enforce the power of the nation’s capitalists and their minions.
Anarchist anti-imperialists reject the program of nationalism. We raise a different program to achieve national self-determination. We do not equate nations with their states. Anarchists say that true independence of oppressed nations can only be achieved through opposition by the working class and oppressed of the nation, to both the native ruling class and the foreign oppressor—as part of an international revolution.
Through nationalism, at most the oppressed nation might achieve its own independent state, with its own flag, its own currency, its own police and army, and its own capitalists. But it will still be dominated by the world market, which is ruled by the big capitalist economies. It will still be dominated by the international power politics of the big imperialists, and always under threat of interference or invasion. Only a world revolution can result in real national freedom.
Anarchist-socialists may participate within a movement for national liberation, while fighting for their full program against the nationalists. As internationalists, anarchists have a negative agreement with nationalists. We agree only on what we are both against—imperialist domination of oppressed nations. We disagree on what we are for: a classless, state-less, autonomous country in an international federation of free peoples.
(4) National self-determination is the same as Trotskyism
This is a variant of point (1), since Trotskyism is a variety of Leninism (and therefore of Marxism). It is a charge repeatedly hurled at me, since I used to be an unorthodox Trotskyist. However, I came to see that he and Lenin had established a one-party police-state dictatorship. This laid the basis for Stalin’s mass-murdering totalitarianism. So I rejected Trotskyism for anarchism.
Well, what had Trotsky actually written about national self-determination? In 1938, he wrote the “Transitional Program” for what he hoped to be a new, Fourth, International. Knowing that World War II would soon break out, Trotsky considered it would be another inter-imperialist war, with the workers having no stake in either side.
However it would be different for the oppressed nations. He expected “colonial or semicolonial countries to use the war in order to cast off the yoke of slavery. Their war will be not imperialist but liberating. It will be the duty of the international proletariat to aid the oppressed nations in their war against the oppressors.” (Trotsky 1977; p. 131)
It is possible that another imperialist government—in competition with the one oppressing the rebellious country—might give aid to that country (as the USA has aided Ukraine against Russia). The “Transitional Program” says that revolutionaries should not give support to that “helpful” imperialist state. “The workers of imperialist countries, however, cannot help an anti-imperialist country through their own government….The proletariat of the imperialist country continues to remain in class opposition to its own government and supports the non-imperialist ‘ally’ through its own methods….” (p. 132)
At the same time, “…the proletariat does not in the slightest degree solidarize…with the bourgeois government of the colonial country….It maintains full political independence….Giving aid in a just and progressive war, the revolutionary proletariat wins the sympathy of the workers in the colonies…and increases its ability to help overthrow the bourgeois government in the colonial country.” (p. 132) This is not nationalism but internationalism. “Our basic slogan remains: Workers of the World Unite!” (p. 133) (Existing Trotskyist organizations rarely follow this perspective.)
In other works, Trotsky applied national self-determination to Ukraine. In 1939, he raised the slogan of “A united, free, and independent workers’ and peasants’ Soviet Ukraine,” or simply, “For a Free, Independent, Soviet Ukraine!” He added, “Not the slightest concession to the Ukrainian nationalists, either clerical-reactionary or liberal-pacifist!” (Trotsky 2009)
An anarchist perspective on national self-determination would be pretty much in agreement with the quoted section of the “Transitional Program”—with two very important differences.
(i) Trotsky, like Lenin, was a centralist. They hoped that support for the self-determination of oppressed nations would lead to the voluntary merger of oppressed and oppressor nations into larger, centralized, units, eventually into a centralized world. Anarchists, however, while being internationalists, are also decentralists, regionalists, and pluralists. We cherish a plurality of societies and cultures. Therefore we advocate the federation of peoples, from the bottom up, rather than centralization.
(ii) Like Trotsky, the anarchists’ ultimate goal of supporting a nation’s struggles is to “overthrow the bourgeois government,” in both the imperialist and oppressed countries. For Trotsky, this is to be followed by establishing centralized “workers’ states.” But revolutionary anarchists want to replace all capitalist governments with non-state associations of councils, committees, assemblies, and self-managed organizations. (For further discussion of the relationship of anarchism, Trotskyism, and liberalism, see Price 2020.)
(5) Anarchists support national liberation struggles but do not support national wars waged by (or for) national States.
This is contradictory. Right now all national struggles are waged either by national states (such as Ukraine) or by leaderships which want to set up new national states (such as in Palestine)—with the possible exception of the Kurds’ Rojava. To reject all these wars of liberation is in fact to reject all national self-determination.
Oppressed nations, fighting for independence, have been led either by national governments or those who wish to create them (with themselves in charge). That is the peoples’ misfortune. Further, the workers and farmers and others of these countries are not (yet?) anarchists; they accept (or do not oppose) their states and would-be states leading the struggles. That is their mistake. Believing in national self-determination is to believe that peoples should make their own decisions and learn from their mistakes. It is not for some imperial power to decide for them what is in their interest, nor yet for a minority of anarchists to decide for them.
But between the people and their imperialist or colonial oppressors, anarchists must be on the side of the oppressed and exploited, rather than be neutral—even if they (unfortunately) have states. But we remain political opponents of those states.
When a labor union goes on strike—but one which is “led” by bureaucratic supporters of capitalism and the state—anarchists must not be neutral or opposed to the strike due to its rotten leadership. Instead, we support the strike, because we support the workers. We participate in the strike and raise money for the strike. Meanwhile we try, as best as is possible under the circumstances, to propagandize against the sell-out bureaucrats, to call for greater militancy and internal union democracy, and to advocate revolutionary anarchist-socialism.
This is the same approach that should be used in wars of national liberation.
(6) Anarchists should not support wars of national liberation if the oppressed nation gets aid from other imperialist powers.
The modern world is divided by competing imperialist states as well as between imperialist states and the oppressed nations (of the Global South and Eastern Europe). Naturally imperialists will seek to weaken their competitors by supporting rebellious nations against rival imperialisms. And naturally oppressed nations will seek aid from imperialisms which are opponents of their immediate oppressor (under the rubric “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”).
For example, during World War II, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan gave political and military support to colonies of the British, French, and Dutch Empires and U.S. imperialism. The U.S., on the other side, aided China against Japanese imperialism. During the Cold War, the imperialist Soviet Union aided national rebellions against Western colonialism throughout the world. This included Vietnam, Cuba, and South Africa’s ANC. The U.S. supported Tito’s Yugoslavia when it broke from the Soviet Union. It gave political support to the other European Russian satellites.
Recently, the U.S. (until Trump) gave massive military aid to the Ukrainians. The Palestinian resistance has been mostly armed by Iran, a regional sub-imperialist. The Kurds of Rojava have been armed and aided in an alliance with the U.S.
A nation fighting for its independence surely has the right to get military aid from wherever it can. This is better than being crushed by its mighty opponent. No doubt it will make as many of its own weapons as it can, and will try to capture weapons from the enemy. But an oppressed nation is bound to be poorer and weaker than its imperialist enemy. This does not mean that, say, U.S. radicals should campaign for U.S. bombs for Ukraine (or, hypothetically, for Palestine), but that we support Ukraine’s freedom to get arms from wherever it can. (That would apply whether it had a capitalist state or was a federation of free communes.)
Many anarchists think that Ukraine has long since been overwhelmed by U.S. domination. However, the Ukrainians continue to be the ones fighting and dying against the Russian invaders. It is still their war. If U.S. or European troops take over the war and become the major military force fighting with Russian (and North Korean) troops, then it will have become primarily a war between imperialisms—and no longer to be supported. So far this has not happened and almost certainly will not happen.
While it is justifiable for an invaded nation to take aid from a rival imperialism, it should be careful. Revolutionary anarchists must warn the nation’s workers not to have illusions about the imperial “ally.” “Forewarned is forearmed.” The Great Powers are no lovers of the rights of small countries. They give aid only to further their own nefarious ends. They will turn on their supposed allies in a heartbeat if they think it is in their interest. The Kurds have had that experience time and again. The U.S., under the vile Trump, is currently giving the lie to all U.S. declarations about “defending democracy” in Ukraine.
Conclusion
In Felipe Correa’s brilliant presentation of Bakunin’s revolutionary anarchism, the Brazilian scholar and activist writes, “The defense of internationalism…in no way means abandoning national liberation struggles and anti-imperialism. After all, engagement in these causes does not inevitably imply support for the State since it is not synonymous with nation, race, or homeland….” (2025; p. 406)
“Such are the foundations of anarchist anti-imperialism: it is [working] classist, anti-statist, internationalist, and aims at a new, completely emancipated society. Moreover, like any revolutionary and socialist movement, it must be a mass movement….Anarchist anti-imperialism claims the concomitant end of both national domination and class and state domination in the nation struggling for liberation.” (p. 408)
References
Correa, Felipe (2024). (Trans.: J. Payn). Freedom or Death; The Theory and Practice of Mikhail Bakunin. Montreal/NY: Black Rose Books.
Dolgoff, Sam (1980) (Ed). Bakunin on Anarchism. Montreal: Black Rose Books.
Evans, Richard J. (2004). The Coming of the Third Reich. NY: Penguin Press.
Guerin, Daniel (1970). Anarchism; From Theory to Practice. NY: Monthly Review Press.
Price, Wayne (2020). “Our Morals and Theirs; Means and Ends in Anarchist, Liberal, and
Marxist Morals.” https://www.anarkismo.net/article/31889?search_text=Wayne
Price, Wayne (2022). “Malatesta on War and National Self-Determination.” https://www.anarkismo.net/article/32666?search_text=Wayne
Trotsky, Leon (2009). “Problem of the Ukraine.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/ukraine.html
Trotsky, Leon (1977). The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution. (Eds.: George Breitman & Fred Stanton.) NY: Pathfinder Press.
(Source: anarchistnews.org, 06708/2025)