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.