askchapo

But there is also a distinctly left-leaning current of Ukrainian nationalism, often represented by younger activists and parts of civil society. Their understanding of national identity is frequently combined with feminism, LGBTQ rights, decolonial theory, and other progressive ideas.

And also they are very pro-market, pro-privatization and anticommunist. This is not a left-wing nationalism, this is

Lmfao this is one of the oldest and most discussed questions in socialism. Stalin himself became a big guy in the Bolsheviks from his writings on the question of nationalisms, with his first official position being Commissar of Nationalities.

Good luck, it's a very rich and intellectually stimulating topic

I don’t think this question is useful for a dialectical materialist understanding. Whether nationalism has a political orientation reduces to the question whether the nation under analysis has a political orientation. Given that the answer hinges on what constitutes the nation, there isn’t any abstract answer to your question. In one country at the same time there can be multiple “nationalist” movements, each in absolute contradiction with the other. One wants to establish bourgeois or white rule, the other wants to establish political power for the proletariat or indigenous peoples. It does not help us understand these historical movements to dwell on contemplation of abstract concepts.

Neither. It's very hard for things to be inherently left or right. Left and right are historically sensitive. In the 1700s, liberalism was left. Today, liberalism is right. Nothing inherent about it.

Every single indigenous group should seek to be sovereign. This is why nationalism in the global south is largely progressive, it's a nationalism that seeks to establish sovereignty against neocolonialism and imperialism. This is also why settler-colonial "nationalism" is highly reactionary, and why nationalism in imperialist countries usually serves to entrench imperialism.

In other words, as a rule of thumb global south nationalism like in Palestine is good, global north nationalism like in the US Empire is bad. Nationalism is highly contextual, and is at its most progressive when helping a colonized group gain sovereignty.

Here's some relevant theory from Lenin, which I'll try to summarize, because I found it insightful. Of course we have a century more of history to draw from, with some of these ideas put to the test, but it's useful to understand his position.

Marxism makes that analysis and says: if the "substance" of a war is, for example, the overthrow of alien oppression (which was especially typical of Europe in 1789–1871), then such a war is progressive as far as the oppressed state or nation is concerned. If, however, the "substance" of a war is redivision of colonies, division of booty, plunder of foreign lands (and such is the war of 1914–16), then all talk of defending the fatherland is "sheer deception of the people".

How, then, can we disclose and define the "substance" of a war? War is the continuation of policy. Consequently, we must examine the policy pursued prior to the war, the policy that led to and brought about the war. If it was an imperialist policy, i.e., one designed to safeguard the interests of finance capital and rob and oppress colonies and foreign countries, then the war stemming from that policy is imperialist. If it was a national liberation policy, i.e., one expressive of the mass movement against national oppression, then the war stemming from that policy is a war of national liberation.

Here, Lenin is correcting a misunderstanding stemming from socialist critiques of WWI and the rejection of the "defense of the fatherland" slogan. That rejection shouldn't be taken as a general rejection of defending nations, because some national projects are actually worth defending. The reason he rejected that reasoning in the context of WWI was that it was a deception: the war wasn't actually about defending nations, it was about fighting over who got to oppress colonies. We have to look at the political conflicts leading up to the war to understand what is being fought over.

In the Western countries the national movement is a thing of the distant past. in England, France, Germany, etc., the "fatherland" is a dead letter, it has played its historical role, i.e., the national movement cannot yield here anything progressive, anything that will elevate new masses to a new economic and political life. History's next step here is not transition from feudalism or from patriarchal savagery to national progress, to a cultured and politically free fatherland, but transition from a "fatherland" that has out lived its day, that is capitalistically overripe, to socialism.

The position is different in Eastern Europe. As far as the Ukrainians and Byelorussians, for instance, are concerned, only a Martian dreamer could deny that the national movement has not yet been consummated there, that the awakening of the masses to the full use of their mother tongue and literature (and this is an absolute condition and concomitant of the full development of capitalism, of the full penetration of exchange to the very last peasant family) is still going on there. The "fatherland" is historically not yet quite a dead letter there. There the "defence of the fatherland" can still be defence of democracy, of one's native language, of political liberty against oppressor nations, against medievalism, whereas the English. French, Germans and Italians lie when they speak of defending their father land in the present war, because actually what they are defending is not their native language, not their right to national development, but their rights as slave-holders, their colonies, the foreign "spheres of influence" of their finance capital, etc.

In the semi-colonies and colonies the national movement is, historically, still younger than in Eastern Europe.

Lenin argued that cultures need to go through a certain phase of development that generally requires being an independent nation. Since Western countries have already gone through this development, nationalism no longer serves any legitimate purpose, and only holds them back from progressing towards socialism. However, for colonized and oppressed cultures, they are generally first and foremost concerned with achieving national autonomy. Having achieved that, they can develop culturally and economically towards socialism, engaging as equals with the rest of the international proletariat.

However, there is further nuance:

In real life the International is composed of workers divided into oppressor and oppressed nations.If its action is to be monistic, its propaganda must not be the same for both. That is how we should regard the matter in the light of real (not Dühringian) "monism", Marxist materialism.

An example? We cited the example of Norway (in the legal press over two years ago!), and no one has challenged it. In this concrete case taken from life, the action of the Norwegian and Swedish workers was "monistic", unified, inter nationalist only because and insofar as the Swedish workers unconditionally championed Norway's freedom to secede, while the Norwegian workers raised the question of secession only conditionally. Had the Swedish workers not supported Norway's freedom of secession unconditionally, they would have been chauvinists, accomplices of the chauvinist Swedish landlords, who wanted to "keep" Norway by force, by war. Had the Norwegian workers not raised the question of secession conditionally, i.e., allowing even Social-Democratic Party members to conduct propaganda and vote against secession, they would have failed in their internationalist duty and would have sunk to narrow, bourgeois Norwegian nationalism. Why? Because the, secession was being effected by the bourgeoisie, not by the proletariat! Because the Norwegian bourgeoisie (as every other) always strives to drive a wedge between the workers of its own and an "alien" country! Because for the class-conscious workers every democratic demand (including self-determination) is subordinated to the supreme interests of socialism. For example, if Norway's secession from Sweden had created the certainty or probability of war between Britain and Germany, the Norwegian workers, for that reason alone, would have had to oppose secession. The Swedish workers would have had the right and the opportunity, without ceasing to be socialists, to agitate against secession, but only if they had waged a systematic, consistent and constant struggle against the Swedish Government for Norway's freedom to secede. Otherwise the Norwegian workers and people would not, and could not, accept the advice of the Swedish workers as sincere.

When two people bump into each other on the street, if both apologize and assume fault, it's less likely to lead to conflict than if they both try to rationally determine who's more at fault. This is essentially what Lenin calls for in what might be considered edge cases. Those of the dominant culture should err on the side of supporting secession (or at least the right to it) to avoid chauvanism, while those of the culture considering secession should be more critical and conditional about the prospect of a bourgeois-led independence movement.

Nationalism can be part of national liberation and in that context has repeatedly served as a force for the left. But also, historically, after the primary battle for national liberation is won, nationalism becomes a force for liberalism and soft subjugation to imperialism. It is too thin of a thing on its own, it does not inherently provide a sustainable force for maintaining a revolution, it's more like an isolated principle that can motivate in a variety of contexts.

Nationalism itself emerges from capitalism and liberalism, it's part of the development of the nation state. For socialists it's a question of how to maintain and use the nation state while also ensuring its liberal and contradictory aspects don't ruin your project.

A condensed explanation from Kwame Ture that I often refer to

I think it depends on the relation to the imperial core. Ukraine is a good example, their "national struggle" is happening within the context of NATO expansion, so it has taken on many aspects of nationalism that are useful for the empire: racism, militaristic jingoism, Orientalism, ethnonationalism, etc. Ukraine can't seriously maintain anything but a right-wing nationalism because, from its core, it is a struggle for imperial expansion. Any left-wing nationalism will whither without the the material base to support it. In the long term there is no future for anything other than right-wing nationalism in Ukraine, it exists solely for the benefit of Westerners.

Israel is Ukraine's only future. They wore the skin of a """progressive""", labor oriented nationalism for decades while colonizing Palestine. Labor Zionism could not survive in the long-term, though, and the longer Israel survives the more right-wing it will become.

nationalism is inherently liberal

the major problem these days is imperialism, so the first question is whether the nationalist movement in question serves or opposes imperialism

This is a great question, and were I not at work right now I'd type up a novel for you!

This goes right up there with questions like "Are Turks white?" "Are Jesus and god the same person?" "Is Keanu Reeves the poor man's Nicholas Cage, or vice versa?" "Pineapple on Pizza?"

Would optimum conditions require socialism to reject nationalism? As you would attempt to achieve global participation without a imperial core.

IMO, nationalism can be leveraged for left wing goals. If a nation has achieved a socialist takeover of the state, then a message of “our great national character has allowed the working class movement to seize power, the rest of the world should emulate that” can be positive. Or, as others have pointed out, invoking nationalism in the “global south” as a way to stir up popular support against incursions, economic or militaristic, from the imperial core.

However, at some point nationalism does need to wither and die. If the whole idea is a global political economy wherein the interests of the working class is front and center, nationalism will just drag that political economy into the same problem that plagues social democracy where the working class thinks, via nationalism, that it’s entitled to more largesse than the working class of a “lesser” nation. So as socialism becomes ascendant and capitalism wanes, nationalism needs to wane with it.

nationalism is a tool to paper over class differences inside the nation (for example, so that porkies and workers fight together). in the current world, porkies will nearly always side with usa, thus nationalism can only be used to tilt workers to serve usa interests, as the porkies are unmovable and will remain such. historically (before air travel and capital freedom of movement), national bourgeoisie could exist as class in itself for itself inside a singular nation, now it cannot. (while hamas and yemen people can serve as counter examples, you might notice that pa is much more conciliatory to their own self liquidation and hamas doesn't have bourgeoisie as such due to work and aid structure inside gaza, while yemen bourgeoisie sits pretty in saudi occupied part of yemen)

*ukraine most definitely showcases the first scenario though, ukrainian oligarchs are freewheeling inside eu and usa, and any attempt to not do so is killed by their brethren/"corruption investigations"