Beyond Ethnostatism

Leftist solutions to the “problem” of diversity – that is, the diversity of identities among all oppressed and exploited peoples – tend to take one of two approaches: suppression or expression.

For socialists of the old school, only a homogenous working class, undivided by “identity” and undistracted by cultural difference, can wage class conflict successfully.¹  Marc James Léger, Identity Trumps Socialism: The Class and Identity Debate After Neoliberalism (2023). Taylor & Francis;  Paul Prescod, “Identity Politics Is No Substitute For Class Politics” (2023). Jacobin.

Opposing this class reductionism is a Left aware that all forms of identity and class-based oppressions are linked, but whose struggles to combat these oppressions in public settings have often provoked backlash – not least from the working class itself. ² Mike Harman, “Identity Crisis: Left Anti-Wokeness is Bullshit” (2016). Libcom.org;  Charles Masquelier, Intersectional Socialism: A Utopia for Radical Interdependence (2023). Bristol University Press.

There is a third strategy for addressing worker diversity, however. It is an option that many early twentieth-century socialists advocated for, and one that has great potential to channel identity-based struggles towards collective liberation: autonomy.

This strategy originates in the 1890s, when the Austrian Social Democratic Workers Party and the Jewish Labor Bund attempted to organize workers in Austria-Hungary and Russia. These socialists realized that neither suppressing worker diversity nor achieving a public “consensus” over controversial cultural matters was possible in their sprawling empires. So they proposed something different: to pass laws delegating authority over “cultural” policies to nationalities themselves. By doing so, party leaders believed, they could remove these issues from contention between workers of different nationalities – thus freeing them up to unite based on class. As the “Pope of Marxism” Karl Kautsky asserted in 1899, “The autonomy of nations is today a necessary foundation for every class struggle.”³ Joshua D. Zimmerman, Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia, 1892–1914 (2012). University of Wisconsin Press. 111.

More than a hundred years later, this socialist vision of “cultural autonomy” has been applied in states across the world – but its radical roots and potential have barely been explored. I intend to introduce this strategy and explore how we might update and apply it today: not in the hope that it will solve all of the Left’s problems, but rather that it could break the conceptual deadlocks that prevent us from even framing our problems effectively.

“The Polish, Czech, and Slovak workers of Austria-Hungary faced discrimination at the hands of Austria’s German-speaking proletariat. Russia’s Jewish proletariat were confined in shtetls and faced extra-judicial murder by Christian workers.”

The Street Pavers, Umberto Boccioni, 1914, Courtesy of The Met Open Access. Boccioni was a member of the Futurists, a group of Italian artists who announced their existence in 1909 with a manifesto published on the front page of the French paper Le Figaro. They called for the abandonment of the past in favor of modern life and aimed to represent the metropolis in “multicolored and polyphonic tidal waves of revolution.” Canvases such as The Street Pavers offered Boccioni the opportunity to radically transform a scene of backbreaking work into a celebration of the powerful form of the modern laborer.

The National Question

Divisive questions of “culture” and “identity” consumed the political life of 1890s Europe. Newer nations like Germany, established nations like France, nations-in-the-making like the Czechs: all claimed – or at least, their bourgeoisie claimed – that “their” nation possessed a distinctive culture, that this culture was threatened by the designs of rival nations, and that a strong nation-state was therefore required to defend that culture.⁴ Otto Bauer, The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy (2000, orig. 1907), 424; For a broader overview of nationalist politics during this period see Jakub S. Beneš, Workers and Nationalism: Czech and German Social Democracy in Habsburg Austria, 1890-1918 (2017). Oxford University Press.  Such beliefs spelled chaos for multinational empires like Austria-Hungary (containing 15 nationalities) and Russia (containing more than a hundred), where controversies over language and education divided the populace in general and the proletariat in particular.

For orthodox Marxists of the era, however, struggles to protect “national culture” and identity were fundamentally reactionary. The existence of such cultures, they believed, was bound to erode under capitalist homogenization. As Marx and Engels had declared earlier, “National differences and antagonisms between peoples” were “…daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world-market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.”⁵ Shlomo Avineri, “Toward a Socialist Theory of Nationalism” (1980), Dissent And all this, many Marxists believed, was for the best. The sooner workers could shed parochial ties of nationality and recognize their universal class identity, the better they could unite and fight against the capitalists. For the proletariat to fight against discrimination based on nationality rather than class, conversely, was to divide the proletariat and delay the revolution.⁶ Even Rosa Luxembourg declared in the 1890s that Polish Jews needed “…neither the Yiddish language nor a separate Jewish workers’ organization, but the language of the surrounding population and a blending with the Christian proletariat.” See Joshua D. Zimmerman, Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia, 1892–1914 (2012). University of Wisconsin Press. 55.

By ignoring nationality-based oppressions, however, Marxists reinforced nationality-based divisions within the proletariat. The Polish, Czech, and Slovak workers of Austria-Hungary faced discrimination at the hands of Austria’s German-speaking proletariat. Russia’s Jewish proletariat were confined in shtetls and faced extra-judicial murder by Christian workers. Workers across Europe, in fact, were being oppressed by their fellow workers. And yet orthodox Marxists largely refused to fight against these injustices for fear of alienating the workers perpetrating them. As one Jewish activist lamented, “Jewish blood flows in the streets and the Jewish socialists look on and are silent.”⁷ Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862-1917 (1984). Cambridge University Press, 222.  Faced with this silence, many workers reverted to nationalism themselves, joining middle-class Zionists or Czech separatists in insisting that only an independent nation-state could protect their interests.

Faced with the prospect of losing their worker-constituency to middle-class nationalism, socialists from persecuted nationalities took the bold step of abandoning Marxist orthodoxy. Rather than choose between fighting national persecutions and the class struggle, they would fight both. As early as the 1860s, Czech and Polish socialists in Austria-Hungary had rejected cultural assimilation as a path to solidarity, forming independent socialist organizations across the Empire. And in 1897 radical Jews formed the General Jewish Labor Union, or the Bund, as a means of fighting both antisemitism and bourgeois rule in the Russian Empire.⁸ Joshua D. Zimmerman, Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia, 1892–1914 (2012). University of Wisconsin Press. 83.  By this time even socialist party leaders in Russia and Austria-Hungary were aware that a more pluralist approach was needed if they were to organize amongst a diverse working-class.

Nonetheless, socialists in these multinational empires still needed to address matters of contention between workers. Questions of which language should be taught at schools, over the names of cities and railroad stations, over the erection or dismantling of monuments, and other issues divided Czech from German workers, Slovene from Ukrainian workers, Serbs from Romanian workers, and Jews from Christian workers. Workers of these nationalities were generally loath to ally with their co-national bourgeoisie to achieve victory in these cultural struggles – but neither were they willing to assimilate into their Empire’s dominant culture. What was to be done?

To address this “national question,” over the course of the 1890s socialists across Central and Eastern Europe expanded Marxist theory, questioning old assumptions around the relation between the state, national cultures, and the class struggle. They produced a host of great and still-fruitful treatises ranging from Chaim Zhitlovsky’s Socialism and the National Question and Vladmir Medem’s Social Democracy and the National Question to Karl Renner’s State and Nation and Otto Bauer’s magisterial The Question of Nationalism and Social Democracy. These studies, together with the practical efforts of socialists to organize a diverse proletariat, yielded bold strategies for how culture, nationality, and identity itself could be leveraged towards the class struggle. At the core of these strategies was the practice of autonomy.⁹ Enzo Traverso, The Jewish Question: History of a Marxist Debate (2018). Brill, 108, 113; Ephraim Nimni, National Cultural Autonomy and Its Contemporary Critics (2005). Otto Bauer, The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy (2000, orig. 1907). University of Minnesota Press, 424

Autonomy

At its core, “cultural autonomy” includes delegating public authority and powers related to cultural matters to a body representing a particular group, such as an oppressed minority, to the extent that that group is autonomous over these policies. To appreciate this practice as a solution to the “problem” of diversity, however, we must first compare it with the alternative: state sovereignty over matters of culture.

Late-nineteenth-century liberals, nationalists, and orthodox Marxists generally believed (and many still believe) that “multicultural” states are fundamentally unstable.¹⁰ John Stuart Mill once declared that “Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities.” Otto Bauer, The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy (2000, orig. 1907), xviii.  Only a homogenous nation could have the unity required for civic/national/class unity. Any nations within a multinational state, therefore, should either assimilate to the majority’s culture or develop their independent state. In either case, state sovereignty was required to enforce the majority nation’s culture.

For theorists like Medem and Bauer, however, these cures were worse than the disease. Efforts by national minorities to establish new states would only create new states under the control of the bourgeoisie, prone to waging war with one another and to oppressing their own national minorities.

But a multinational state with state sovereignty over cultural matters was also problematic. If a single bureaucracy was responsible for addressing all issues of “identity” across a multinational state, workers of different nationalities would be forced to fight one another – and ally with their bourgeois co-nationals – in order to represent their nationalities.

Here is where autonomy comes in. If cultural and educational functions were delegated to nationalities themselves, workers of different nationalities would no longer need to fight one another for control or representation in the cultural sphere. They would become non-issues. Without these controversial issues dividing them, workers of different nationalities would be free to unite against their class opponents. And not only that: delegating cultural authority to nationalities would place workers in the position to fight against their co-national class enemies for control over these “cultural” functions. In either case, delegating autonomy would advance the class struggle.

Divide and Conquer

What would autonomy look like? While the proposals of these socialist-pluralists varied, it is worth focusing for now on the most well-developed approach – that of Otto Bauer. He proposed that each “nation” of the Austro-Hungarian empire be incorporated as a legal body, democratically elected and with the ability and power to administer all “national” affairs for their members no matter where in the empire they resided. For example, a Czech national “corporation” would have the power to establish and supervise educational and cultural affairs on behalf of the Czech “nation.” All who desired to would be free to voluntarily join and participate in these “national” bodies. To exert their powers, these bodies would be financed by the government while also possessing the power to levy taxes on their members. Meanwhile, the state itself – having delegated its authority over controversial matters of culture and nationality to the “national corporations” – would be responsible only for matters concerning the citizenry as a whole.¹¹ Simon Rabinovitch, Jews and Diaspora Nationalism: Writings on Jewish Peoplehood in Europe and the United States (2012). Brandeis University Press, 52.

Bauer believed that this “two-track” system of governance would minimize national conflicts between workers while channeling class conflict in productive directions. To understand why, we must consider how such conflicts played out both in the existing state and in Bauer’s proposal. Under existing arrangements, with the state responsible for major educational and cultural policies, workers were forced to fight against workers of other nations in order to “represent” their nations within state politics. But under Bauer’s proposal such squabbling would cease – for cultural issues would no longer be of state concern at all. Rather, each nationality would enjoy full power over these domains. And with cultural policy no longer a divisive issue along national lines, workers of every nation could better unite and confront their shared capitalist foes on economic and social questions – such as, say, the ownership of the means of production.¹² Yes, the bourgeoisie would attempt to inflame their proletariat co-nationals on other cultural matters, but, the theory goes, the working-class would not take the bait. Otto Bauer argued, for example, that bourgeois debates over which language the internal state bureaucracy should use were no concern of the working class, for “the bureaucratic administrative apparatus, whatever language it employs, represents a form of foreign rule for the working class [.].” Otto Bauer, The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy (2000, orig. 1907), 287, 451. 

But what about the national corporations themselves? Why did Bauer believe class conflict would take place within them as well, between workers and bourgeoisie of the same nationality? To understand why, we must learn from the way he and others reconceived nationality and culture in ways conducive to socialist goals.

Nationalities were formed, according to Bauer, by the same forces which shaped anything else: the struggle for material existence. Ancient tribes and clans, relatively non-hierarchical in comparison to later societies, developed relatively distinct cultures and languages in response to the differing material circumstances they faced.¹³ The extent of hierarchy within the ancient world remains an object of contention. For excerpts on the Anthropologist David Graeber’s take on this, see David Graber, “The Rise of Hierarchy,” (2018). The Anarchist Library. For a critique of his position, see Chris Knight, “‘The Dawn of Everything’ Gets Human History Wrong,” (2021). Climate and Capitalism As these “nations” grew under feudalism and capitalism, their languages and cultures tended to survive, but they were no longer produced by and for the majority of their members. Rather, it was the elites of these nations who now determined the cultural production of “their” nation (at least when they were not emulating the culture of rival elites).

But this would change under socialism. By eradicating hierarchies within nations, workers of each nation would be free to claim the culture of their ancestors and freely develop it in light of their new values and circumstances.¹⁴ While Bauer spoke largely in terms of “updating” such cultures by infusing them with a libratory class perspective, we can also imagine updating these cultures in light of feminist, de-colonial, ecojustice and racial-justice frameworks as well. For one study on this, see Chen Shen, Relevance and Application of Heritage in Contemporary Society (2018). Taylor and Francis.  This could not happen, however, without a broader class revolt against the bourgeoisie of every nation. As Bauer went on to declare, “…the socialization of the means of production is the goal, the class struggle the instrument, of the national policies of the working class.”¹⁵ Otto Bauer, The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy (2000, orig. 1907), 424

But the liberation of the nation via class struggle could not take place as long as workers were fighting alongside their bourgeois class enemies in order to represent their nation’s culture within a single State legislature. It was on these grounds that Medem and others insisted that the State delegate “cultural” policies to the separate nationalities themselves. Within these corporations, workers of each nationality would be able to fight their bourgeois co-nationals for control of their culture and education – just as their comrades in the broader state were fighting for control over the means of production. In either case, a victory for the workers would mean victory for their nation.

Practice

Socialists first applied this theory of autonomy to their own organizations. In 1897 the Austrian Social Democratic Party organized itself as a federation of six national parties: Ukrainian, Czech, Polish, German, Italian, and Slovene. While each party accepted a common program – such as an all-Austrian party congress and an executive committee composed of delegates from all national parties – they were otherwise autonomous to address matters concerning their constituencies.¹⁶ Jakub S. Beneš, Workers and Nationalism: Czech and German Social Democracy in Habsburg Austria, 1890-1918 (2017), 176.  The Jewish Labor Bund similarly demanded that the Russian Social Democratic Party (which they had helped found) organize itself as a federation, with the Bund granted autonomy over matters concerning the Jewish proletariat.¹⁷ Roni Gechtman, “A “Museum of Bad Taste”?: The Jewish Labour Bund and the Bolshevik Position Regarding the National Question, 1903-14”, (2008), Canadian Journal of History, 35. 

The most radical socialist proposals around autonomy, however, were those for reorganizing states themselves into multinational federations. In 1899 the Austrian Social Democrats declared that Austria must transform itself into a “democratic federation of nationalities,” with each nation managing its national affairs “on the basis of complete autonomy.”¹⁸ Joshua D. Zimmerman, Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia, 1892–1914 (2012). University of Wisconsin Press. 114.  Six years later the Bund similarly argued that Russia must develop “into a federation of nationalities in which every nationality enjoys full autonomy.”¹⁹ Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862-1917 (1984). Cambridge University Press, 220. 

This call of the Bund and the Austrian Social Democrats to workers – that they must fight against their bourgeois co-nationals for the sake of their national future – worked for a time. In 1907 the Austrian Social Democrats won the single largest electoral victory of any socialist party before World War One, with 23% of the country’s Parliament turning red at a single stroke.²⁰ Jakub S. Beneš, Workers and Nationalism: Czech and German Social Democracy in Habsburg Austria, 1890-1918 (2017), 140.  And the Bund, committed to fighting against both antisemitism and bourgeois rule, quickly became one of the largest radical groups in the Russian empire. By 1906 the organization had a membership of nearly 40,000, comprising 10% of all Jewish workers in the Empire.²¹ Philip Mendes, “The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Labor Bund,” (2013), Jewish Currents; Gertrud Pickham, “Yiddishkayt and class consciousness: the Bund and its minority concept,” East European Jewish Affairs, (2009), 253. 

Perhaps even more impressively, their vision of “cultural autonomy” survived the horrors of World War One. Radical parties ranging from the Armenian social democrats, the Russian Constitutional Democratic Party and the Greek Socialist Workers’ Federation adopted “autonomism” as a principle for reorganizing their states. Jewish “autonomists” like Simon Dubnow called for a Palestine where Jews, Muslims, and Christians could enjoy equal autonomy.²² See Hayyim Rothman, No Masters but God: Portraits of Anarcho-Judaism (2021), Manchester University Press, 19-20; Simon Rabinovitch, Jewish Rights, National Rites: Nationalism and Autonomy in Late Imperial and Revolutionary Russia (2016). Stanford University Press. 

And it survives today. In Europe many multinational Central and European countries like Croatia, Estonia, Kosovo, and Latvia – well aware of the dangers which intra-national conflicts can bring – explicitly refer to cultural autonomy in their minority policies. In Slovenia, ethnic communities elect “national” councils with the right to consent on state decisions affecting minority rights. In Serbia, these councils can make decisions on their own affairs and maintain their own cultural, educational, and media institutions. There are examples of institutional “layering” in states from the Netherlands to New Brunswick, Canada, where religious and linguistic minorities can establish and autonomously administer their schools and other facilities, supported by public funds.²³ Marina Andeva, Non-Territorial Autonomy: An Introduction (2023). Palgrave Macmillan 125, 148, 151. 

How effective and just have these kinds of policies been? The record is mixed. There are many instances when non-territorial autonomy and consociational governing arrangements have defused tensions and strengthened pluralism in formerly war-torn regions, as in the Philippines, Spain, New Genia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.²⁴ Paul C. Stern, International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War (2000). National Research Council, 494.  But these policies have also brought some negative effects: in some states, arrangements of national autonomy have entrenched (if also subduing the overt hostility of) intra-ethnic tensions, occasionally even to the point of creating clientistic relations between the state and ethnic elites.²⁵ Damir Kapidžić, “A mirror of the ethnic divide: Interest group pillarization and elite dominance in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” (2019). Journal of Public Affairs.  In addition, non-territorial autonomy has proven an unacceptable solution for indigenous groups for whom access to a particular territory is a central part of their identity.²⁶ Natalija Shikova, “The Possibilities and Limits of Non-Territorial Autonomy in Securing Indigenous Self-Determination.” (2020) Filozofija i društvo / Philosophy and Society 31, no. 3. 

Moreover, cultural autonomy’s potential to channel “identity politics” towards the class struggle – a potential that Bauer and Medem put so much stock in, as we have seen – has not been realized anywhere. But this is not necessarily due to these policies: more “unitary” states have also seen a decline in progressive class mobilization since at least the 1990s. Rather than simply regarding cultural autonomy as a blanket solution or a historical failure, we should see it as a tool like any other – one we should be better acquainted with, but which should be used or discarded depending on the circumstances.

Applications

Today we are once again in an age of culture war – what the Austro-Hungarians would’ve called kulturkampf. Questions of nationalism and national “identity” dominate our headlines and divide the left. Authoritarian populists in Europe and elsewhere have swung into power on the dual currents of economic instability and “cultural backlash” against immigrants, national minorities, and other groups or currents which threaten “national identity.” While the Left has struggled to push these tides back, neither orthodox “class first” socialists nor a more “intersectional” left have won large working-class support. 

It is under these conditions that we might consider something like the Austro-Marxist concept of autonomy. Ongoing “culture wars” tend to be fought in (and over) venues shared by a large, diverse constituency: mass culture, mass education, and the resources of the nation-state.²⁷ For an overview of these conflicts, see Andrew Hartman, A War for the Soul of America: A History of The Culture Wars (2015). University of Chicago Press.  There are good reasons for this, of course. These institutions are not going away any time soon, and we need to struggle for equal and just representation within them. Nonetheless, such a strategy comes with the costs earlier socialists identified: pitting the working class of different nationalities and cultures against one another while forcing them into alliances with their co-national bourgeoisie. 

Now, what might an “autonomist” strategy look like? There are perils here, of course: Jim Crow’s legacy of “separate but equal” shows how a pretense of equality can justify unequal arrangements. But we should not let that historical legacy completely overwhelm the many examples in which intra-state separatism has been the goal and outcome of liberation movements.²⁸ See Ahmed Shawki, Black Liberation and Socialism (2006). Haymarket Books. James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed; An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (2009). Yale University Press.  Rather than dismiss autonomy entirely, we should consider what forms it might take in the United States.

The blunt instrument of separate “national corporations” – single bodies with the right to legislate on behalf of all their members – seems both unjust and impractical. But we don’t need to go that far. There are already groups with a measure of “functional autonomy” over different elements of our lives: groups in civil society. We already have “peak associations” like the NAACP, bodies representing different religions and faiths and ethnicities (CAIR for Muslims, the JCC Association of North America for Jews, etc.), and bodies providing cultural and social and educational services for their members.

These associations, to be sure, are currently dominated by middle-class apparatchiks. But that’s precisely the point: it is in these venues where class cleavages within an identity-based group are most exposed. These are the parallels to the “national” corporations that Bauer advocated for, and the “trenches” in which class conflicts between members of the same “group” can be fought. Nonetheless, these venues are not exactly hospitable venues for a progressive counter-attack. Many of them grant all decision-making power to their staff at the expense of their membership, providing few opportunities for ordinary people to organize within them.

For that reason, the left might consider building out its own infrastructure on the cultural-identity front. This can be less a matter of starting new initiatives than inflecting our existing campaigns with “autonomist” themes. Take cooperatives. In Bologna, Italy, 85% of social services are provided by social cooperatives under contract with the municipality, while in Quebec solidarity cooperatives provide 40% of homecare services.²⁹ Doug O’Brien, “Why social coops offer potential transformation of care and more,” (2024). Shareable. Pat Conaty (2014) “Social Co­operatives a Democratic Co-production Agenda for Care Services in the UK,” (2014). Co-Operatives UK, 20. These cooperatives thus provide their members with a degree of “economic” autonomy while building up alternative economic values in civil society.³⁰ Daniel Wortel-London, Worker Co-Ops Have a Role to Play in Socialist Strategy, 2024. Jacobin.  But they can also provide cultural and educational services, providing radical alternatives to both their for-profit equivalents and mainstream identity politics.

These are, of course, merely first thoughts on how to apply a cultural-autonomy class strategy today. I fully expect them to be critiqued and modified. But I extend these thoughts in service of my larger point: that the Left has a heritage of innovative solutions to the “problem” of worker diversity that we should experiment with. Again, promoting cultural autonomy is not a substitute for contesting cultural injustices within shared spaces. But we might consider how they could function as complementary strategies.

A Matter of Pride

A few final thoughts. A modern autonomist strategy must not be confined to addressing the kind of “cultural” matters that the Austro-Marxists had tried to tackle in the past. Intersectionality demands that we combat every kind of injustice within the existing and expanded “trenches” of civil society – those related to gender, citizenship status, language, class, race, and more. Similarly, we must support one another’s diverse struggles in order to achieve victory in these fronts. This was something the early socialists were well aware of. As Bauer claimed, “…everything that makes the Czech worker a coward and kills the consciousness of his own worth harms the economic interests of the German worker…”³¹ Otto Bauer, The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy (2000, orig. 1907), 249.  The same principle applies today: an injury to one is an injury to all, no matter what form it takes or whom it hurts.

But there is another element that an autonomist strategy needs today: pride.

Few of us today are “joiners,” partly because the elements of our identity that are represented in civil society, such as our faith or even our ethnicity, do not speak to us. And maybe that’s a problem. Socialist theorists like Bauer believed that national cultures could be enriched under conditions of equity. But if workers were to wage class war to rebuild those cultures, they needed to care about their culture first. It was for this reason that both the Bund and the Austrian social democrats promoted working-class national cultures within their organizations, with the Bund in particular becoming a champion of Yiddish education and culture.³² See Jack Jacobs, Bundist Counterculture in Interwar Poland (2009). Syracuse University Press.  Caring for one’s own cultural traditions, believing in the possibilities of their culture’s development under conditions of freedom and equity, could help motivate workers to fight for those conditions. As one early Bundist declared “The awakening of national and class consciousness should go hand in hand.”³³ Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862-1917 (1984). Cambridge University Press, 192. 

Today we are indeed seeing “awakenings” of national consciousness – but for all the wrong reasons. We are seeing nationalisms aligned with the most regressive forms of statism and hierarchy, tendencies that Bauer and others believed could only lead to the shriveling of national cultures. It was their brilliance to separate national pride from nationalism and to recognize that the latter was in fact the arch-enemy of the former. It was only by fighting their bourgeois co-nationals in the state and elsewhere, and joining with the proletariat of all nations, that each nation could flourish.

And this leads us back, once again, to the strategy of autonomy. Such a strategy cannot solve all the left’s problems. But it might help us redirect and channel our era’s conflicts in a more productive direction: toward the cause of collective liberation. And whether it works or not, one thing is clear: our current approaches aren’t working, and we are running out of time. ~