In Marxist thought, national identity has never been viewed favorably. Marx, Engels and Lenin viewed modern nations as products of capitalism and the bourgeoisie. National identity was a historical construct used to organize states and unite citizens across social classes. In doing so, it erased the distinction between capitalists and workers and weakened the class struggle.
Stalin, perhaps the most pragmatic of Marxist ideologues, treated the “national question” as part of the class struggle and socialist revolution. He defended the self-determination of peoples, but rejected nationalisms that fragmented proletarian unity. Hence the famous maxim: “Proletarians of all nations, unite!”
Despite criticism of bourgeois nationalism, the Soviet Union and Maoist China supported liberation movements against the colonial powers. In these cases, the national struggle was seen as progressive, because it weakened colonial rule and could open the way to socialism. It was a pragmatic approach: national identity could be useful in certain historical moments, but it was never an end in itself.
This pragmatism distinguishes Marxism from the old nineteenth-century, romantic and nationalist left. In Portugal, the Generation of 70 – Antero de Quental, Oliveira Martins, Teófilo Braga and others – believed in the regeneration of the homeland as a historical mission. Nationalism was seen as a driver of progress and modernization. Irony of History: the national anthem consecrated by the Estado Novo and today venerated by the extreme right was born as a patriotic song by the republican left, calling for resistance to the British Ultimatum of 1890. If for Marxism national identity was a means, for the republicans it was a cultural and historical essence to preserve.
More than a century later, most of Marxism’s ideological heirs continue to mishandle national identity. Identity politics has replaced, in many discourses, the old class struggle, introducing a permanent tension between universalism and particularism. If Marxism saw national identity as secondary to class, identity politics shifts the focus to gender, ethnicity, sexuality, origin or religion. This challenges the idea of the proletariat as a universal collective subject and makes it even more difficult to reconcile the national question with the social cause, unless it is a means to achieve the objective of destroying the international capitalist system.
This is why the Bloco de Esquerda, Livre and sectors of the PS firmly defend the self-determination of the Palestinian people or the rights of minorities, but rarely speak out about Portuguese national identity. Just this week, Catarina Martins stated in an interview with Diário de Notícias that being integrated into our country means sharing “the values of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic”. The answer is revealing: for a large part of the left, national identity is not built on historical and cultural continuity, but on adherence to a constitutional text. Now, Portugal has almost nine centuries of continuous history. It is a nation that was formed in the Middle Ages, consolidated with maritime expansion and reinvented itself with the 25th of April. This identity is neither static nor homogeneous: it has always been made with contributions from Jews, Africans, Brazilians, Asians and migrants of various origins who have enriched our culture, as Catarina Martins recalled in the same interview. But it is an identity that exists beyond any Constitution, as the majority of Portuguese recognize.
Eric Hobsbawm, another old school Marxist, warned in Identity Politics and the Left (1996) that fragmentation into multiple identity groups weakens the capacity for universal mobilization against capitalism. Without a common project, the left loses strength and democracy becomes vulnerable. Open societies, which depend on minimal consensus and a shared collective identity, can be corroded by identity divisions that fuel exclusivist populism and nationalism.
At a time when immigration is increasingly contested and nationalist discourses are gaining ground, this fragility becomes dangerous. By insisting on an identity based solely on the Constitution and remaining focused on identity politics, the left risks losing connection with popular sectors that recognize themselves above all in the nation’s historical and cultural continuity. The result is the fragmentation of the left, the polarization of society and the weakening of democracy.
The national question is back with redoubled force. And it forces us to ask: should the modern left return to a more universalist approach, capable of responding to the desires of ordinary people – including the defense of our culture and our way of life -, without giving up essential principles such as respect for differences and the Human Rights of minorities and migrants?
Without a left capable of speaking to the people as a whole, democracy will be hostage to populism and extremism.
Director of News Diary