# the national question

In the history of [[Marxism]], there has been a long-standing and unresolved question as to how the [[nation state]] fits into the formula for undoing capitalism.

One could categorize each response into a few camps:

1.  Nations are, for all intents and purposes, not real, and not worth considering. We should be organizing along international lines only. To even entertain the idea of working within a national model is to cede to bourgeois demands.
2.  The nation is a necessary evil. Nations are to be _won_ by their proletarians, and global proletarians must organize according to their nations
3.  There are oppressed and oppressor nations. An oppressed nation must first throw off the yoke of a foreign empire before entering socialism. Therefore the global proletariat must organize to destroy oppressor nations
4.  The nation is a specific unit in the goal to organize socialism. There is no socialism without a nation.

This question is far from answered, but in the contemporary left, [[Lenin]]’s position ([[oppressed/oppressor nations]]) seems to have won out, for better or worse.