Quote by Philip Pomper

“The nationalities question fit ill with Marxism. It was perhaps even more puzzling than the peasant problem. One could at least delude oneself into believing that the peasant problem was soluble in Marxian terms by extrapolating from economic data, constructing Procrustean sociologies, and predicting the inevitable splitting of the peasants along class lines. But how did one fit nationality into the Marxist scheme? Of course, according to Marxian theory national boundaries created superficial divisions compared to economic forces and the relations of production, but nationalist passion seemed to inflame people and mobilize them even more than their class interests. World War I would show how ready people were to make sacrifices for the sake of the national or imperial dignity or, in the case of the Slavs of the Russian Empire, for related ethnic groups and coreligionists. Even the discredited Romanov dynasty would be able to rally its people around the war effort—at least at the outset. This was a complication—indeed, as history has showed, a fatal one—for a Marxian socialist with a genuinely internationalist orientation.”

Quote by Philip Pomper