In this article, first published in 2004, Rob Sewell deals with the important contribution Lenin made on the national question and how such a correct stand on this issue guaranteed the success of the Bolshevik Party in October 1917. The national question remains a key issue for Marxists in the current epoch of capitalist crisis.

The epoch of world growth fueled by globalisation is over. Two giant free trade deals are being thrashed out which would place the United States at the centre of its own strategically drawn up domain. But far from being a means to open up the world to a further intensification of trade and to liberate capitalism from its own fetters, these deals, engineered by US imperialism, represent protectionism masquerading as free trade.

It is nearly seven years since George Bush, the then president of the US, made his famous “New World Order” speech. This was in 1991. In the build-up to the Gulf War the main imperialist power on earth promised a world without wars, without dictatorships and, of course, a world firmly under the control of a single all-powerful world policeman–the US. After the fall of Stalinism, US imperialism really thought that the world would be firmly under their command and they would be able to dictate the destiny of each and every country. All conflicts in the world were to be solved through dialogue in a kind of “Pax Americana.” Now all these dreams have been reduced to rubble.