Marxist theory underestimated nationalism due to a flawed grasp of capitalism’s depth.

Evidence

What the Marxists did not understand about the political and ideological phenomenon of nationalism is that it was not (and is not) a historical aberration (of proletarian internationalism). Nor is it necessarily the contrary: a developmental stage of internationalism. Nationalism defeated the Marxism of the Second International (World War I), but ironically, was a basis of the Marxism of the Third International (the Russian revolutions; Stalin’s socialism in one country; the conditions for membership in the Comintern), yet its primary world-historical significance was denied. It remained for most northern Marxists a secondary phenomenon (to the class struggle). As I have indicated, Lenin saw its character as principally political, Luxemburg as principally cultural. The error resided less in the mythic, analytic, or theoretical treatments of nationalism, than in “a defective grasp of the overall nature and depth of capitalist development.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 368

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader historiography of Marxist failure to predict nationalism, echoing themes elsewhere in Black Marxism.