ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 compares two specific classical Marxist theories of the nation, the ones by Otto Bauer and Rosa Luxemburg.
Otto Bauer (1881–1938) was a leading theorist of Austro-Marxism and in the years 1918–1934 deputy chairman of the Austrian Social Democratic Workers Party. His most well-known work and only book translated into English is The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy. Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) was a co-founder of the party Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. She became one of the leaders of the left-wing faction of the Social Democratic Party of Germany that she left because of the party’s support of the First World War. She, together with Karl Liebknecht, founded the Spartacus League, which later became the Communist Party of Germany. Luxemburg also theorised nationalism and the nation from a Marxian perspective.
Chapter 4 provides answers to the following questions: What are the differences between Otto Bauer’s and Rosa Luxemburg’s theories of the nation and nationalism? What are the foundations of a Marxist theory of nationalism?
Whereas Bauer advances a cultural, spiritual, psychological notion of the nation, Luxemburg’s notion is materialist and a form of ideology critique. Analyses mostly ignore that Bauer from 1918 onwards propagated pan-Germanism and the Anschluss of Austria to Germany (unification of Austria and Germany).
