Le problème de la nation dans le marxisme français

Bibliographic Data

ID6239704
AuthorsAndre Vachet (University of Ottawa, corresponding author)
Year1970
Volume3
Issue1
Pages18-36
Publication date1970-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCanadian Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0008-4239 • E-ISSN: 1744-9324
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0008423900027086
OpenAlexW2105379597
LanguageFR
References cited14

The problem of the nation in French Marxism gives rise to many difficulties. Most of the Marxist scholars, in spite of all their efforts, have not been able to explain the nation coherently in Marxist terms. Most frequently the attempt is made to integrate the nation into Marxist ideology by equating it to a social class. But this identification is impossible: (1) The nation and the social class are not treated on the same level in Marxist sociology. For Marxism, social class and nation have an unyielding content that prevents the reduction of one to the other. (2) The classes in a society play a dysfunctional role whereas the nation is an integrative factor that overcomes the divisions. (3) Finally, the class struggle, according to Marx, leads to social revolution, while a national struggle can only produce a political revolution. This analysis shows that it is impossible to integrate the nation in Marxist theory, if one grants to the nation an absolute value in the social order.Marxism treats the nation as a secondary reality of the social order. It is the category of “partial-totality” which provides the key to this integration. Society is the totality, but not an empty one. It is a totality which gathers together other totalities linked in an essentially dynamic relationship. Marxism defends the concept of nation as a partial totality, that is as an “historic entity,” but in so doing deprives it of any absolute and definitive character and of formal autonomy. It is as a partial totality simultaneously determined by “the” totality (as goal) and by concrete behaviour or praxis (which constructs totality) that Marxism retains and defends the nation not only as a strategic and momentary element but also as a support for specific values which are integrated into the universalism of the civilization of free men.Thus the French Marxists, faithful to their principles, have not only accepted the nations, but have even defended them as “partial totalities” and as the medium of praxis. It is by a distortion that some French Marxists such as Aragon, Casanova, Cogniot, Leduc, etc., have been able to surround the nation by a halo as if it had an eternal value in itself. More coherent are those who like Henri Lefebvre or Maxime Rodinson have seen in the nation a reality attached to historical development, setting loose in the development of humanity those values which are durable acquisitions in themselves, but whose forms are subject to time and to the renewal of praxis.It is thus that neither the identification, nor even equality, but the simultaneity of national culture and socialist humanism can be explained. The specific can take the form of the universal

Absolute (philosophy · Epistemology · Ideology · Marxist philosophy · Political science · Politics · Social order · Social science · Sociology · Working class · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Law · Philosophy · Political and Social Issues · Political Economy and Marxism

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