Marxism and nationalism : the misleading European heritage

Nimni, Ephraim Joseph

Abstract

The aim of the present study on the classical Marxist European Heritage on the national question is to establish the causes for the recurrent intellectual and political inability of this tradition to conceptualise and explain the nature of the national phenomenon.

The main hypothesis of this thesis is that there is a recurrent thematic unity between the different European schools of Marxism, despite the considerable intellectual and political differences between the different European Marxist traditions.

This thematic unity is called the Marxist parameters of analysis of the national phenomenon, and it consists of the theory of the universal evolution of the forces of production, the theory of Economic reductionism, and the Eurocentric bias in the discussion of the universal process of change.

The works on the national question of Marx and Engels, Luxemburg, Kautsky, Bernstein, Lenin, Stalin, Gramsci and Bauer are evaluated in this work to show how this thematic unity operates in the various competing Marxist approaches.

The theories of Antonio Gramsci and Otto Bauer were found to be more sensitive to the multifarious nature of the national phenomenon because they are less bound to the above-mentioned parameters of analysis.

Citation

Nimni, E. J. (1987). Marxism and nationalism : the misleading European heritage. (Thesis). University of Hull. Retrieved from https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4211062

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Aug 16, 2011
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 22, 2023
• Keywords: Political science; Public administration
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4211062
• Additional Information: Department of Sociology, The University of Hull
• Award Date: Apr 1, 1987