"Economic Nationalism"? (was Re: Who Killed Vincent Chin?)

[Carrol Cox]

rc-am wrote:

> yoshie wrote:
>
> > Does "economic nationalism" mean the same thing, wherever and
> whenever it
> > is said to appear?
>
> If you mean to ask 'do you think there are good nationalisms and bad
> nationalisms?', then the answer is 'no'.    The difference between the
> nationalisms of countries like the US and countries like Indonesia's is
>
> that the former affects more people than the latter; but quantitative
> morality has never been a favourite of mine, as you know.

This is not a philosophical but a political question, and quantity does
enter. Indonesian Nationalism affects the population of Indonesia,
a few hundred million. U.S. nationalism affects (at a conservative
estimate) around 5 billion people. There is, of course, disagreement
on this, but I will offer a tentative suggestion that, if one were able
to poll all those around the globe who even call themselves marxists
a rather substantial majority would agree that a qualitative difference
exists between U.S. nationalism and Indonesian or Guatemalan
nationalism.

And here we have, I think, a place where marxist jargon clarifies,
"everyday" speech (that is, capitallist jargon) obscures. Angela uses
the terms "good" and "bad," which are universalizing terms, as
opposed to "correct" and "incorrect," which with some precision
remind us that we are looking at the question *from the point of
view* of the international working class. And "international working
class" should itself remind us that we are operating in a concrete
context in which it is, for the present, impossible to think except
at a high level of abstraction (too high for present purposes) from
that point of view (of the *international* working class). We can't
think from that point of view because what that view should be
is precisely the question at issue.

So we can specify (and the argument is that this question can be
usefully debated *only* within such specifications) that the
question is, is it correct for Nestor in Argentina to argue that,
*in Argentina*, nationalism *can be* a correct position for
the Argentine working class to take?

Let's first try to establish as large an area of agreement as possible.
If I construe Angela's post correctly, she holds that nationalism is
*always* an incorrect political position for the working class of
any country. Specifying that, we agree on the following propositions
(in each case the phrase, "from the point of view of the working
class)):

Nationalism is incorrect in the United States.
Nationalism is incorrect in Canada.
Nationalism is incorrect in Australia.
Nationalism is incorrect in New Zealand.
Nationalism is incorrect in France.
Nationalism is incorrect in Germany.
Nationalism is incorrect in Japan.
Nationalism is incorrect in the United Kingdom.
Nationalism is incorrect in Belgium.
Nationalism is incorrect in the Netherlands.
Nationalism is incorrect in the European Union.
Nationalism is incorrect in Switzerland.
Nationalism is incorrect in Sweden.
Nationalism is incorrect in Denmark.
Nationalism is incorrect in Norway.
Nationalism is incorrect in Luxemburg.
Nationalism is incorrect in Israel.

In all these cases, moreover, it can be asserted that *as a matter of
principle* nationalism is incorrect. In at least three nations, however,
it may be or may not be i ncorrect as a matter of principle -- from
where I sit I cannot say:

Nationalism is probably incorrect in Italy.
Nationalism is probably incorrect in Spain.
Nationalism is probably incorrect in Turkey.

The following then would be a generalized area of disagreement,
with the possibility held open that it may be narrowed:

In all other cases whether nationalism is correct or incorrect
can NOT be answered in the abstract but must be worked
out within the working class of that nation/country. Moreover,
*as a matter of principle*, Marxists sitting in any of the nations
listed above are not in a position to judge the correctness or
incorrectness of nationalism in the remaining areas of the world.
To relate this to the current thread, I would argue that neither
Angela nor I can make a principled judgment on the correctness
or incorrectness of Indonesian nationalism.

The general principle was expressed by a poster on the marxism list:

"As Hegel said, the truth is concrete. Also, Lenin said the devil is in
the
details. And I say, 'A brokh tsu dayn lebn,' which roughly translates
into
'You have to know something about a country before assuming that your
Marxist template applies to it.'"

Now I think we around the world did, last spring, in the debate over the
US aggression in Yugoslavia, learn enough about the (unfortunately
former) Yugoslavia for me to affirm, at least tentatively, the following
propositions:

Nationalism was correct in Yugoslavia.
Nationalism was profoundly incorrect in Bosnia.
Nationalism was profoundly incorrect in Kosovo.
Nationalism was profoundly incorrect in [all the other component
parts of the former Yugoslavia]

We have complete agreement, then, on certain parts of
Angela's argument. For example,

    [*the 'white australia policy' was the first law passed by the
australian
    national state in 1901, a law and a 'national liberation movement'
built
    upon a conflict between british foreign policy toward china
(insistent upon
    the right of movement of colonials within the empire) and australian
    economic nationalism.]

Yes, agreed. I list Australia among those areas where nationalism is,
in principle, incorrect, and Angela's history underlines that point.
Much of U.S. history is of course subject to a similar criticism, and
it is perhaps more important here than elsewhere, given the fact
that the nation was created (as D.W. Griffith immortally dramatized)
by the suppresison of black freedom in the South after the Civil
War. In the United States (I do not speak of any other nation
here) retrospective nationalism is probably as incorrect as nationalism
in the present -- unless, perhaps, we were to make our national
anthem that version of "John Brown's Body" which contains the
line: They hanged him for a traitor, themselves the Traitor crew.
But the nation there celebrated has, actually, never existed in any
form. It is impossible to fight against the truism Sir John Harrington
offered 500 years ago:

                Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason?
                For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

The defeat of Reconstruction made it impossible (while speaking
a popular language) to call Robert E. Lee the traitor he was. His
treason prospered.

We are agreed, then, that there can be no correct nationalism in
the imperialist nations. The core of our disagreement seems to
be expressed in the following passage:

    > What do you think of the following post?

    >> Imperialism has either deformed,
    > >thwarted or drowned in blood the processes by which our peoples
    > >would have been able to constitute nations out of our local
    > >realities.

    what do you think?   using nations (and nationalities as well) in a
    in this way is anachronistic and retrospectively fanciful, to say
    the least.  there's something particularly ahistorical about talking
about
    some qualitatively different formations in a language drawn from a
    different time; and what it suggests is an attempt to legitimate
certain
    claims via that ineffable sense of Tradition or The Past that
nationalism
    deploys so necessarily vaguely upon what is unmistakably a twentieth
    century political terrain (in particular that of the early to mid
20th C).

If I understand this correctly, Angela holds that general principle
allows
us (whether we sit in Australia or the US) to judge the correctness of
Nestor's argument that nationalism (or nationalism of a certain sort, to
be defined through struggle *in* Argentina) remains for the Argentine
working class a progressive position. I hold that we cannot say -- that
it will be determined by political processes in Argentina or, more
precisely, by political processes within the Argentine working class.

On another part of Angela's argument more clarity is needed before
we can decide

    What are you saying, that states are referees, or even better
bulwarks
    against local and foreign capitalists?    !!   National states are
moments
    in an international economy.  Without those enclosures, the
international
    economy would not function as smoothly as it has managed to.  For
instance,
    capital strike, or really, the constant threat of such, requires
national
    states through which to deploy a discipline and austerity upon
'their'
    workers in the name of national economic health.  Either that
happens, or
    so-called international agencies would have to step in directly,
often
    enough by force.

I don't understand this. I don't know much about the internal policies
of Libya or North Korea, but I believe they have to some extent
successfully stood somewhat apart from the international economy,
and that has probably been to the advantage of the workers in those
nations. Iran has partially stood apart -- and it is because of internal
political forces (the political quality of Iranian nationalism as it
currently
exists), not the nationalism as such, that that regime has been
oppressive. From *outside* (i.e., for either Angela or me) it would
seem necessary to see Iranian nationalism as a potentially regressive,
potentially progressive force, with the decision on that question
being totally out of our hands.

Certainly Peron (and for awhile Peronism) was to the advantage of
the Argentine working class, despite some of its serious shortcoings.

The World Revolution is not going to come tomorrow morning. In
the meantime we need to be careful in any attempt to directly
translate the more abstract reaches of marxist philosophy into
immediate policy dictates.

Carrol