Nationalism

The following text is based on an intervention at the conference Historical Materialism Paris: Conjuring the Catastrophe / Combating the Catastrophe, held from 26 to 28 June 2025. 

Let me start with some explanations concerning the title of my paper.[1] There is a commonly shared opinion on the relation between the “founding fathers” of historical materialism and the nation. Shared by non- or anti-Marxists and by most Marxists alike, this claims that Marx and Engels have little to say on the subject. “Little” does not mean here quantitatively little, since it is acknowledged that their writings include lengthy discussions of those “national questions” that were of primary importance at their time – Poland, Italy, Ireland, German unity, the “Eastern question”, colonial expansion, to name just the most prominent ones. The claim is, rather, that, in all those texts, there is little, if anything, that is properly original and specific, that is, integrated to their broader theoretical framework.