Vol. 81/No. 11      March 20, 2017

 

Letters

 
‘Down with the frontiers?’
You quote Osborne Hart, SWP candidate for mayor of NYC, as saying, “The slogan raised by many liberals and middle-class leftists to tear down the wall and open the border is utopian and dangerous. If enacted, such moves would sharply increase joblessness and competition among workers, and deal blows to the unity of the working class.”

I find this puzzling. I recall attending SWP conventions in the mid-1970s where “down with the frontiers” was a prominent slogan. National borders are artifacts of the capitalist state, allowing the free flow of capital and commodities but regulating workers’ movements. Please explain your current stance.
Chuck Cairns
Ray Brook, New York

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The Militant received the following letter at the same time we received the one above. It quotes Russian Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin explaining why the slogan ‘Down with frontiers’ is utopian and wrong under capitalism. The excerpt is from Lenin’s speech on the national question on April 29, 1917, which is printed in Lenin’s Collected Works, vol. 24, pp. 299-300. In his remarks Lenin refers to another related article, whose full title was “A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism.” It can be found in vol. 23, pp. 58-59.

Dear Editor,

I wanted to forward this to you:

“The method of socialist revolution under the slogan ‘Down with frontiers’ is all muddled up. We have not succeeded in publishing the article in which I called this view ‘Imperialist Economism.’

“What does the ‘method’ of socialist revolution under the slogan ‘Down with frontiers’ mean? We maintain that the state is necessary, and a state presupposes frontiers. The state, of course, may hold a bourgeois government, but we need the Soviets. But even Soviets are confronted with the question of frontiers.

“What does ‘Down with frontiers’ mean? It is the beginning of anarchy. … The ‘method’ of socialist revolution under the slogan ‘Down with frontiers’ is simply a mess. When the time is ripe for socialist revolution, when it finally occurs, it will spread to other countries. We shall help it along, but in what manner, we do not know. …

“We say that frontiers are determined by the will of the [local] population. Russia, don’t you dare fight over Kurland [a region of Latvia]! Germany, get your armies out of Kurland! That is how we solve the secession problem. The proletariat cannot use force, because it must not prevent the peoples from obtaining their freedom. Only when the socialist revolution has become a reality, and not a method, will the slogan ‘Down with frontiers’ be a correct slogan. Then we shall say: Comrades, come to us.”
Ernesto X
by email  
 
 
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