The population of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir is about 3.3 million. During the call for the long march from Muzaffarabad up to 600,000 people came out to march on the streets against Pakistani rule. In other words, nearly a fifth of the population of Kashmir, one in every five individuals, were out on the march for the question of Kashmir. That question, is not limited to a fair share in the water resources of Kashmir, or the specific excesses of the police and armed forces on the people. It is not limited to the right to peacefully organize and agitate. The question being posed is the question of self-determination. In such a situation, the RCI has come out with a truly confusing position that, far from helping the cause of the movement, may actively damage it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During his contribution to the World School of Communism, Alan Woods stated \u201cThe right to self-determination is a relative right and is always subordinate to the general interests of the proletariat and the world revolution.\u201d This is not a position that can guide us in this situation of acute pre-revolutionary crisis.
The National Question was developed and sharpened by Lenin and Trotsky in the early half of the twentieth century. Before them they had the rich experience of the Russian revolution where the National Question was posed in the most complex manner. This is not to say that Lenin and Trotsky didn\u2018t face opposition. Among the spectrum of opposition to the Bolshevik Leninist Position was the sectarian approach towards National Liberation criticized harshly by Trotsky in his polemic on the Ukrainian question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a reason why revolutionaries support the national struggles notwithstanding the obvious disadvantages in the formation of small nation-states. National liberation represents an unfinished task of the bourgeois democratic revolution and as it stands is of immense strategic importance for the revolution both on a national basis as well as on a global basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alan Wood\u2019s statement reflects confusion about where to place the struggle for self-determination. Without acknowledging this as a major unfinished bourgeois democratic task, it is facile to speak of it being a \u2018secondary\u2019 or \u2018subordinate\u2019 issue to the overarching task of world revolution and the working class. Even more so, when the Kashmiri working class is itself an active part of the mobilization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whilst the revolution we aim at is emphatically a socialist revolution establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, bourgeois democratic goals nevertheless get entwined in this struggle where they are yet unresolved. Self-determination for oppressed groups is one such key bourgeois democratic goal which in our epoch falls upon the shoulders of the proletariat for its resolution. For the success of the Socialist revolution, it is imperative we secure the support of the non-proletarian classes of the peasantry and petty bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Support for the national struggle is as much a strategic\/tactical question here as a question of principle. \u2015A country that oppresses can never itself be free. The question of national self-determination is one which not just impacts the peasantry and petty bourgeois, but strikes at the heart of the working class. Speaking of the Irish working class in England, Marx stated \u2018For a long time I believed that it would be possible to overthrow the Irish regime through the rise of the English working class. I expressed this view in the New York Tribune. A more in-depth study convinced me of precisely the opposite. The English working class will never achieve anything until it has rid itself of Ireland.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The politics of division is as much a reality in Britain\u2019s former colonies as it was in Britain itself. As long as the comrades of the RCI do not take the living dynamics of the historical class struggle into account, they are inevitably caught in an abstract view of the proletariat and consequently fail to understand the importance of National Struggles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In writing Results and Prospects, Leon Trotsky concluded that in this epoch of imperialism, the bourgeoisie has lost its historically progressive character. This meant that they were incapable of fulfilling the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution. This was crystal clear in Russia in 1906, it was no less clear in case of the colonial countries like India. The failure of the bourgeoisie in fulfilling the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution manifests itself in the persistent existence of caste oppression in India, but also in the form of national oppressions most glaringly in Kashmir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Kashmiri bourgeoisie whether on the Indian or Pakistani side of the occupation, are by and large puppets of the respective occupying states. The limit of their capacity is to gain a few minor concessions to autonomy, without undoing the exploitative rule of either India or Pakistan.
For the working class in Pakistan, facing the exploitation of the capitalist system, the continued oppression of Kashmir (along with other nationalities) presents a challenge not unlike that faced by the Russian working class. The question posed, is whether there can be a socialist revolution by the working class, when the working class is not politically equal. What would the Russian revolution mean for the millions of oppressed nations of Central Asia, the Caucasus, Ukraine and others? It is the same question that the Pakistani and Indian working class will have to face with regards to Kashmir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Socialist revolution, and by extension, the interests of the working class, cannot be counterposed to that of democratic tasks. In those countries where the tasks of the democratic revolution are left unfilled, the working class will resolve them in course of the socialist revolution. This is not an abstract question, the matter of how these pending tasks will be resolved must be clarified as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If we consider the question of self-determination of oppressed nationalities, the answer becomes clear. The question of worker\u2019s revolution in Pakistan and India cannot be counter-posed to the question of Kashmiri self-determination, nor can the question of this democratic task be diminished in favour of the socialist revolution. The Kashmiri people in Pakistan occupied Kashmir are on the march against the ruling class of Pakistan, the same ruling class that exploits the workers and peasants of the rest of Pakistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In order for the working class to wage a united fight against the capitalism in India and Pakistan, it must also be an equal fight. It cannot sidestep the question of self-determination. This was the essence of the strategy of Lenin and the Bolsheviks in their approach to similar questions in the colonies of the Russian Empire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n Central Asia<\/strong> \u2013 The Bolsheviks are often criticized for continuing Russian imperial hegemony over Central Asia. Detractors point to how the Central Asian SSRs operated under Stalin and how they remained over the course of the Soviet Union as the counter-revolutionary bureaucracy took over. The praxis of the Bolsheviks was far removed from the hegemonic actions of the Stalin era and the bureaucrats that succeeded him. Over the course of Soviet rule, the application of the principle of self-determination was further crystalized in the Soviet policy towards Central Asia. Unlike the Czarist regime, or the Stalinist regime that came to replace the Bolsheviks, Lenin ensured respect for the religious and linguistic rights of the people of Central Asia, while also ensuring that Islamist reactionaries were contained or eliminated. The Central Asian SSRs were not subordinate colonies under Russian rule, but equal members of a Soviet Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ukraine<\/strong> \u2013 Putin often likes to diminish the stature of Ukraine, by citing Lenin and pointing to the fact that Lenin formalized the existence of a Ukrainian SSR within the Soviet Union. It shows that through to this day, the great Russian chauvinists who were brought up with the traditions of Stalinism, could not bring themselves to accept Lenin\u2019s application of the right of self-determination to Ukraine. For long Czarist Russia had denied the very existence of the Ukrainian people as a separate cultural entity. They were denied the right to their linguistic identity and heritage, while also being oppressed within the exploitative Czarist framework. The Czarist state that was overthrown was not built until the 18th century, and it was not born with Ukraine as an inalienable part of the Empire. Russia acquired the territories of Ukraine through a process of conquests and partitions over the late 17th and 18th centuries, fighting other rival empires for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bolsheviks recognized this history, and recognized the fact that Communist revolutionaries owe no loyalty to reactionary boundaries. Ukraine was lost to the Russian Empire as it collapsed in the last years of World War 1, what replaced it was not a sovereign state but a puppet state propped up by the militaries of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires. This fake independent Ukrainian bourgeois state was looted for every pound of grain that the Central powers could get to fuel their war effort in a futile attempt to change the reality in the Western front, it was the Ukrainian workers and peasants who paid for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lenin and the Bolsheviks presided over a revolutionary expropriation of capital in Russia, they also witnessed the emergence of revolutionary processes in the periphery of the Russian Empire, including in Ukraine. Bad faith arguments by bourgeois liberals paint Soviet rule over Ukraine as Lenin continuing Russian imperialism under a red banner. Nothing could be further from the truth. Lenin would respect the right of the Ukrainian people, creating a separate SSR over Ukraine, the Ukrainian language was acknowledged and encouraged. Ukrainian culture underwent a renaissance under Bolshevik rule, as the people of Ukraine could now express themselves with freedom denied by Czarist Russia. This history is important for us, because it shows that the Bolsheviks remained steadfastly on the side of the right to self-determination even in the midst of the civil war, where the very existence of the workers\u2019 state was at stake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Decades later, Ukraine would be ravaged by Stalinist counter-revolution under which the region would suffer a terrible famine and be subjected to some of the most brutal killings during the purges. Trotsky stood on the principle of the right to self-determination that Lenin and the Bolsheviks followed during the revolution. In his article on the Ukrainian question in 1939, Trotsky wrote – \u201cBut the independence of a United Ukraine would mean the separation of Soviet Ukraine from the USSR, the \u201cfriends\u201d of the Kremlin will exclaim in chorus. What is so terrible about that? \u2013 we reply. The fervid worship of state boundaries is alien to us. We do not hold the position of a \u201cunited and indivisible\u201d whole. After all, even the constitution of the USSR acknowledges the right of its component federated peoples to self-determination, that is, to separation. Thus, not even the incumbent Kremlin oligarchy dares to deny this principle. To be sure it remains only on paper.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" During the long march from Muzaffarabad last month, one in every five individuals were out on the march for the question of Kashmir. That question, is not limited to a fair share in the water resources of Kashmir, or the specific excesses of the police and armed forces on the people. It is not limited to the right to peacefully organize and agitate. The question being posed is the question of self-determination<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":76373,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"litci_post_political_author":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4138],"tags":[22,6293,6972,4139,6973,4329,3832,6974,6936,5160,6975],"class_list":["post-76365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kashmir","tag-isl","tag-jaac","tag-jkjaac","tag-kashmir","tag-national","tag-pok","tag-protests","tag-question","tag-rci","tag-self-determination","tag-separatism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/152929416.avif","fimg_url":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/152929416.avif","categories_names":["Kashmir"],"author_info":{"name":"Carlos S.","pic":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fdf3a2076204dbf848fa7838fc9e2787f3317262207b35e333f31316e39fce9c?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"political_author":null,"tagline":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76366,"href":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76365\/revisions\/76366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Finland<\/strong> \u2013 One of the first major decisions of the Bolsheviks on coming to power was granting Finland independence. This was not a tactical deviation, but founded in their principled stance on self-determination. Finland was one of many oppressed European nations of the Russian Empire, and had been so for over two centuries by that point. The Finnish people were denied their democratic rights to express their culture and sovereignty by the Czarist regime. The Russian revolution destroyed the Czarist state and built the first successful worker\u2019s state over its corpse.
\u2028The Bolsheviks were immediately confronted with the complex question of what to do with Russia\u2019s occupied territories, the oppressed nationalities that inhabited its periphery, from Finland and Ukraine in the West to Central Asia in the South and East. Finland was the first litmus test of the new Bolshevik government, to show whether the new worker\u2019s state would continue the imperialist order of the Czars or build a different nation.
\u2028The right of self-determination was codified into the Soviet constitution, guaranteeing the right of self-determination up to secession. This was a revolutionary step, and represented the concrete expression of the theory of Permanent Revolution. Finnish independence was accompanied by a revolutionary process within Finland, which required the direct intervention of the German Empire to crush. It would inform Bolshevik strategy towards Central Asia and the rest of Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2028The Bolsheviks were faced not only with the task of self-determination, but also the task of the social revolution in a complex colonial context. The Bolsheviks worked closely with the reformers of the Jadid movement, while ensuring the right of the people of the colonies to their language, religion and autonomy were respected. The principle of self-determination was adhered to, despite direct threat from imperialist backed reactionary proxies in the white armies and the Basmachi movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2028 “Not a trace remains of the former confidence and sympathy of the Western Ukrainian masses for the Kremlin. Since the latest murderous \u201cpurge\u201d in the Ukraine no one in the West wants to become part of the Kremlin satrapy which continues to bear the name of Soviet Ukraine. The worker and peasant masses in the Western Ukraine, in Bukovina, in the Carpatho-Ukraine are in a state of confusion: Where to turn? What to demand? This situation naturally shifts the leadership to the most reactionary Ukrainian cliques who express their \u201cnationalism\u201d by seeking to sell the Ukrainian people to one imperialism or another in return for a promise of fictitious independence.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To those of us who call ourselves Trotskyists, we have an obligation, if not to follow Trotsky to the letter, to at least follow his principles. Even as late as 1939, Trotsky upheld the right of self-determination, that too against what was then the only workers state in existence. If that right could be held against the Soviet Union in 1939, and its counter-revolutionary bureaucracy, what excuse do we have in not posing it against the reactionary rulers of India and Pakistan when it comes to Kashmir?<\/p>\n\n\n\nSelf-determination and the socialist revolution <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The essence of the theory of Permanent Revolution, is the resolution of unfinished democratic tasks as part of the socialist revolution, executed under the leadership of the working class. It does not justify treating democratic tasks as a second fiddle or subordinate to the worker\u2019s revolution, on the contrary, the theory lays down the organic connection between the unfinished democratic revolution, and the socialist revolution. That includes the question of self-determination up to secession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For countries like India and Pakistan which are like a prison house of peoples, the question of self-determination for oppressed nationalities is posed in the sharpest manner. There can be no South Asian revolution without resolving this question. In Kashmir, we have three occupying powers, China, India and Pakistan. The correct position here, most consistent with the interest of the working class, is to stand unconditionally in support of the struggle for self-determination breaking out in Kashmir, among other places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alan Wood\u2019s statement does not help one bit in advancing this understanding, it does not treat the living struggle in Kashmir with necessary importance, and as a result can\u2019t see the revolutionary process unfolding within Kashmir or for that matter in Pakistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n