Devon Pea

devonpena@GMAIL.COM
Saturday, November 14, 2015 1:00 PM
Please share with your listservs.
This version i.e. edited and includes my introduction to the National Question for those
unfamiliar with the history of that discourse; a bit of foreground for Rudy's insightful missive.
Go to: http://goo.gl/2vx4JI
Or scroll down....

Devon G. Pea, Ph.D.

"Memory is a moral obligation, all the time."
-J. Derrida

Acua on the National Question | Collective identity and liberation

Thus, a common psychological make-up, which manifests itself in a

common culture, is one of the characteristic features of a nation.
- Josef Stalin, Marxism and the National Question

Moderators Note: With apologies to followers and readers for our continued
absence in the blogosphere the past few months, I am presenting this recent
insightful essay by our colleague Rodolfo F. Acua on the so-called national
question. The essay is in the form of a response to a question posed to Dr. Acua
by a Chicano colleague concerned with the paucity of Mexican-origin faculty in
academia.
For the newly initiated, here is a very brief overview of what the National
Question is all about, as I understand it. In short, it was resurrected in Josef
Stalins concern for the challenges posed by the fragmentation of the proletariat
into distinct ethno-national identity formations during the rise of Soviet
communismnot that such a thing actually ever existed since the destruction of
the factory soviets began with Lenin himself.
The most frequently used version of Stalins original essay, which was first
published inProsveshcheniye in March-May 1913, is available for download
at Marxists.org. Stalin famously opens The National Question with a deceivingly
simple question and immediately offers a fascinating answer:

What is a nation? A nation is primarily a community, a definite community

of people[Then he continues] This community is not racial, nor is it
tribal But not every stable community constitutes a nation.
This is the phrase most often cited in the discourse. But Stalins approach to the
national question conforms to an essentially Euro-Asiatic-centric worldview
revealing a classic dialectical contradiction, one that feigns to de-racialize the
cultural forms of life while insisting that the nation must be imagined and
constructed as a unified community comprised of different national-origin
(qua ethnic) groups, whose struggles and social forces must be mastered and
subordinated (governmentalized by the party-state) to the larger working-class
revolution. In other words, for Stalin ethnic or national-origin diversity was seen as
a strategic challenge to the larger struggle for communism. Here is an excerpt from
the same infamous essay, revealing of Stalins contempt for the many nations
comprising the Soviet Union [Empire]:

And the mounting wave of militant nationalism above and the series
of repressive measures taken by the powers that be in vengeance on
the border regions for their love of freedom, evoked an answering
wave of nationalism below, which at times took the form of crude
chauvinism. The spread of Zionism among the Jews, the increase of
chauvinism in Poland, Pan-Islamism among the Tatars, the spread of
nationalism among the Armenians, Georgians and Ukrainians, the
general swing of the philistine towards anti-Semitism all these are
generally known facts. The wave of nationalism swept onwards
with increasing force, threatening to engulf the mass of the
workers. And the more the movement for emancipation declined, the
more plentifully nationalism pushed forth its blossoms. [Emphasis
added]
Of course, we can see the reincarnation of the same master narrative in Putins
aggressive expansionism into those very same borderlands. So it is worth noting
that Stalin, toward the end of this political missive, concludes:
It will be seenthat cultural-national autonomy is no solution of the
national question. Not only that, it serves to aggravate and confuse the
question by creating a situation which favours the destruction of the
unity of the labour movement, fosters the segregation of the workers
according to nationality and intensifies friction among them.
The Chicana/o movements use of nationalist discourse and ideology is a unique
and divergent tendency in the history of social movements, alongside the Black
Liberation and American Indian movements, in the United States and interpretation
of its qualities might consider the nuances arising from this contextual frame: One
is related to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, the First Nations, who clearly
have a different take on the matter, which is why the Chicana/o discourse on the
national question continues to be as important today as it was in the 1960s and 70s
when it first registered as a salient theme in movement discourses. We were after
all among the emergent troublesome borderlands nations confronting the American
settler state with the type of militant nationalism disdained by Stalin.
It is within this distinctly American context that Acua is able to articulate how
Chicana/o engagement with the national question actually challenged the myth of

the American melting pot and represents a discourse seeking to integrate race,
class, gender, sexuality, and other divisions imposed by the dominant formation of
the white settler colonial nation-state.

The National Question

Rodolfo F. Acua | Northridge, CA | November 14, 2015

Rudy, dont you think if you had become part of the

academic community instead of remaining as an outsider
you could have been instrumental in increasing the
percentage of faculty of Mexican extraction beyond three
percent?
Take care,
Mike
No, I dont; the program would have never succeeded if I
were an insider. We have 26 tenure track and 40 part timers
offer 166 courses a semester. This is part of the problem;
History says we are taking their students (we are over
twice as large as History). They havent hired Mexican
faculty members because they are racist.
Rudy
What distinguishes people of Mexican extraction in the United States from those in
Mexico are their life experiences in this country that have, for better or for worse,
shaped them. That is why many sociologists pay so much attention to the questions
of race and cultural conflict. Their experiences have grown more complex over the
years as the numbers of Mexican American and other Latino groups have
escalated. The total Latino population has zoomed from 5 million in 1970 to 53
million in 2010, with two-thirds of them of Mexican extraction.

Latino organizations have also changed as their constituent population has grown.
Most non-Mexican immigrants have arrived in recent years, distinguishing them
from Mexican Americans who have a much older history in the United States, and
who have consequently suffered the brunt of rural segregation as well as the harsh
racism of the pre-1960s. Indeed, Mexican American organizations are rooted in
civil rights issues and the protection of the foreign born.

During the 1960s and early 70s, local Chicana/o organizations changed, dropping
the fiction of other white that was at the core of its earlier civil rights cases.
Influenced by radical and civil rights organizations, more of them began to think
about what long-range strategies should they use? Were they part of the Mexican
or American working class?
Some Mexican American organizations looked to Karl Marxs definition of the
National Question, which they discussed in study circles. They repeated Josef
Stalins definition that A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of
people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and
psychological make-up manifested in a common culture. In doing this, they
challenged the myth of the American melting pot.

They recognized that only by a collective identification could they achieve

liberation. Mexican Americans did not invent the National Question. It had been
raised since the 18th century and later debated by Marxists and anarchists. The
basic premise of the National Question was the Right of Nations to SelfDetermination of oppressed minorities. By extension, it referred to nations with
multi-nationalities.

The question took on new meanings for Mexican Americans and Latinos as they
have achieved a critical mass. Meanwhile, many national organizations and leaders
adopted assimilationist strategies supposed to solve the problem of inequality that
replaced the more radical end self-determination.

It is important to reiterate that the discussion of the National Question is not a

product of the 20th Century. Karl Marx and his followers, for instance, wrote about
National liberation, the Irish and the Jewish question and imperialism.

Today, the National Question has become much more complex as national
liberation has shifted toward a focus on ending the Third Worlds subservience,
challenging neoliberalism, and curtailing the influence of the World Bank and IMF
that seek to continue imposing austerity programs and collect on national debts.

My involvement in Arizonas campaign against Ethnic Studies forced me to focus

on the privatization of public schools and higher education, as well as driving
home the importance of micro-history in answering the question of whether
assimilation is a viable strategy for achieving the liberation of Mexican Americans
and others. The thesis of my blogs in recent years has been that the ruling elite
achieves its dominance over the minority through a strategy of pseudo assimilation
and the erasure of memory.
The other day, I read an article In These Times by John Collins titled For the
Activists in the New Economy Movement, All Revolution Is Local. It is a spinoff
of the feminist saying that all politics are local. It notes the collateral damage
unlimited economic growth has caused harm to society, as the mainstream media
works to fit the debate about economic inequality into a bootstrap-capitalist versus
freeloader-socialist box, here are some of the realities fueling the skepticism.
Collins solution is local democracy through co-op and consumer ownership
ideas.

While I agree with much of what Collins writes, my take is different. Mexican
Americans and Latinos are going to have to take another look at the National

Question and learn to say no to assimilation policies. This includes No to

political parties, including Democratic Party candidates and trade unions. This can
only be accomplished through a collective discussion of the National Question and
a dialogue on what is to be done.

These collective discussions are absent today in Arizona and efforts to roll back the
privatization of public schools and higher education.

The rhetoric of assimilation is to isolate minorities. There is an over concentration

on culture that plays a huge role among oppressed minorities who over-identify as
members of a national culture rather than on the inequality. By assimilating, the
minorities inequality is not changed and their political emancipation is delayed.

The debate on strategy is not new. In the decades surrounding 1900, when most
working-class families were on the brink of financial ruin, mutual aid societies
(mutualistas) were formed to provide health insurance and a space for workers
they were combinations of social clubs and financial institutions.

Mutualistas were invaluable to minorities who were often excluded from trade
unions. Socialists, however, criticized them as relieving capitalists of their duty to
provide for essentials such as health care. It weakened the struggle against capital
and delayed revolution.

My criticism of assimilation is not so much based on separatism as on as a strategy

to achieve collective goals. My discussion with Mike that introduces the blog is a
counter-argument to those who maintain that my tactics and those of others should
have been more cooperative. Assimilation and the call for civility are strategies by
the ruling elite to keep us in our place and subvert the preservation of memory and
community.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMwnWtovbjQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEpv5XTvTMM

https://siglodelucha.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/an-overview-of-the-history-of-thechicano-national-question/

http://www.theroot.com/blogs/the_grapevine/2015/11/kareem_abdul_jabbar_on_m
ichael_jordan_he_took_commerce_over_conscience.html

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03.htm

https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1909/national-question/ch01.htm

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/crnq/3.htm#v20pp72-027
http://links.org.au/node/164

http://www.scribd.com/doc/101053725/The-Mexican-Question-in-the-Southwest

http://uniondelbarrio.org/main/

Posted 1 hour ago by Devon G. Pea

Labels: Chicana/o movement ethnicity National Question nationalism racial identity Rodolfo F.
Acua

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