Contenu du sommaire : Nation(s)

The article discusses the complex relationship of Marx and later Marxists to the nation and internationalism. After a brief review of Marx's positions, those advanced by various theorists and politicians (notably Otto Bauer, Rosa Luxemburg, Stalin, Gramsci) are presented. The most recent developments, notably through the question of the European Union and the debates it arouses, form an important part of the last section of the article. The main intention is to show how the nation has never been clearly defined in the Marxist and socialist traditions. In particular, the articles deals with evolutions over the last thirty years: after a period during which the national fact was relativized, several political currents have sought to reappropriate the nation, without proposing an approach offering grounds for a consensus.

The reference to Fichte and his Discourse to the German Nation is present in the double genesis of German social democracy: Lassalle and Marx-Engels. The present article begins with an examination of a little-known debate on the consubstantiality of Fichtean idealism, the unification and strengthening of imperial Germany, and social democracy. The latter, generally praised by Jaurès from as early as 1891, was criticized by Andler, for whom Germany, in 1918 and after, remained a Reich (and not a republic), where revolution, bourgeois or proletarian, was thus impossible. We go on to examine the difference in treatment, by Engels and subsequently by Kautsky, between the appreciation of Czech nationalism (perceived as opposed to Austro-German domination) and Polish nationalism (confronted with Russia), questioning the argument that « the sole interest of the revolution » (Engels) was at stake, regardless of that of the « central » powers in 1914. Finally, we chart the effects of the Andler-Jaurès debate in the recurrent rift among French socialists on the German and the European question, a rift in evidence from the Spanish War, Munich, through Collaboration and Resistance, subsequently in evidence over the question of the CED, the Maastricht Treaty and the European Constitution. In 1989-1990, the « fall of the Wall » and German unification resulted from a nationalist upsurge which, together with the disintegration of the Soviet system, had particular repercussions in a Yugoslavia whose destruction resulted from the effects of a European policy whose inspiration was largely German.

Analysis of the national question in the former Habsburg territories was for long conditioned by the categories which crystallized in the immediate aftermath of World War One, when newly established States forged their historical narratives. This approach tended to conceal the identification dynamics, which cannot be reduced to the national dimension alone. Processes of nation-building in the 19th century were much more the result of a combination of territorial dimensions – whether local or regional – or historical dimensions, than of what was strictly national. Few national groups of the Dual Monarchy conceived a national State project before the Great War. This « grey area » of the processes of nation-building can thus be analyzed as one of the reasons for the great variety of cases to be observed at the end of the First World War, when various groups – whether national or not, and on different scales – foregrounded the concept of « self-determination » as basis for the political reorganization of a territory.

This article aims to define the nation in Africa through the notion of « revolution », i.e., of a total transformation of former conditions – both precolonial and colonial – with a view to the foundation of progressive and democratic national structures. Using the case of the countries of the Sahel, in particular Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, the article analyzes national revolution as a phenomenon whose development took place over an extended sequence of time, resulting in a contradiction between a political leadership increasingly disengaged from them, and the peoples that are increasingly aware of and are demanding their citizen rights. The contradiction is furthermore shaped in different ways by the political issues resulting from the specific conditions, either urban or rural. As such, the historical dynamic is one leading to struggles and contestations that pit peoples against the elites, thus suggesting that if the national revolution is far from having succeeded, it has not miscarried either.

Too often, the Syrian conflict is viewed through features of its very recent history. By revisiting the stages that preceded the emergence of the Syrian nation-State, it is possible to measure the weight of history and the complexity of the process of national construction. Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Umayyad period, the period of the Ottoman Empire, followed by decolonization and the process of national construction, all represent strata of Syrian history accounting for a combination of identities, feelings of belonging and representations, which constitute the different national ideologies at work in the contemporary period and until today. Nationalism, Islamism and Pan-Arabism, in turn idealize a part of Syria's past but are doomed to failure, for reasons related to their specific structural features. Looking back on certain milestones in Syrian history can help explain the incomplete process of national construction that led to the current crisis. The contemporary condition of social, economic and political fragmentation has plunged Syria into a situation that is one of violent rupture. It is a challenge calling for the acknowledgement of what is dead, so as to allow for what is not yet born.

The article attempts to locate the emergence and definition of the nation in the restricted matrix of political forms for human societies (tribe, city-State, empire). The evolutionary dynamic of these forms is continuing. The article assesses the positions for and against the relevance of nations today. It analyses certain arguments for and against their potential roles, offering a diagnosis of the current state of competing political forms (a world of empires or nations), predicting some possible openings. A world without nations is unlikely to conform to what has long been defined as the only possible path for the progress of political freedom.

How can we characterize the contradictions between the State and the nation, while taking into account the fact that actually existing society is divided into classes? This paper analyses the elements based on the implications of a full employment policy, following Kalecki's analysis. We also ascertain that for the articulation of the notions of State, nation and social classes, it is relevant to examine the idea of the dual nature of the State, certain elements of which are found in Marx. Finally, we address the current challenges of economic policy, taking into account the trends tending to the erosion of the role of the State and of nations.

In this interview devoted to their book Managerial Capitalism : Ownership, management and the coming new mode of production (Pluto Press, 2018), G. Duménil and D. Lévy address the implications of their analysis of managerial capitalism for the study of historical capitalism, its fundamental class structures and variable power alliances. The thesis of traditional Marxism, identifying managers with a fraction of the capitalist class, is criticized, along with the presuppositions conveyed by the concept of « State capitalism ». Invited to rehearse, in greater detail, their distinction between modes of production and « social orders », as representing variable configurations of power hierarchies and class alliances, the authors clarify the reasons for their introduction of a new category, that of the managerial mode of production, which imposes a rethinking of the capitalist mode of production itself in terms of a logic of « hybridity ». This makes it possible to offer a more complex reading of the long term tendencies of historical capitalism, adding greater precision to the class analysis of managerial capitalism, and thus enabling the authors to specify, in somewhat different terms, relative to the post-war « compromise » (characterized by an alliance between managers and popular classes, under the leadership of the former), what is involved in the latest social order to date, characterized by an alliance « at the top » between managers and capitalists (to the detriment of the popular classes): neoliberalism.

The article deals with the analyses proposed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels of the movement of wages within the dynamics of capitalism, and the question of the « impoverishment » of workers, particularly between the 1840s and the 1860s. It shows that while Engels never clearly predicted « absolute » or « relative » impoverishment, Marx, in his writings of the 1860s and after, maintains the thesis of a decline in « relative wages », but that he no longer predicted a decline in real wages over a long period of time and did not formulate any « law » of « increasing misery » for the proletariat.

Drawing on the Vorwärts archives for the 1890s and 1900s, the article analyzes the symptomatic frequency of the references in the German Social Democratic Party's official newspaper to Gustav Landauer, scathing critic of Marxist socialism and who wanted to « give socialism a new direction ». Both through what is said and what is not said in the newspaper during the period, the author of the article tries to detect the strategy implemented by Vorwärts, involving the discrediting of anarchism and the consolidation of a claim to monopoly in the very definition of socialism. But behind these rhetorical games of caricature and denigration, the article also aims to show how the controversy between Vorwärts and the « inevitable Landauer » points up a series of structural and fundamental disagreements regarding the conception of history, society, experimentation and social change.

This article starts from the observation that the belief in history finds itself radically challenged in contemporary thought and representations, a condition which Fredric Jameson studied through the notion of postmodernity. The aim here is to show that Gramsci's reflections are particularly valuable, in several respects, for the confrontation of the crisis of modern historicity. First, he conceives of history as a process of struggles, thus managing to grasp its inherent consistency, without denying its openness. Secondly, through the concepts he forges, notably that of hegemony, he analyses the different ways in which the representations of history express concrete historical situations, and in turn produce immanent effects in these situations. Finally, by understanding the link between the crisis of hegemony and the crisis of historicity, he manages to think the possibility for subalterns to regain and enact a specific sense of history.