Doug asks
>Why have so many state-centered alternative development regimes in
>the so-called Third World gone bad? Hardt & Negri have a theoretical
>answer: that national liberation struggles turn sour once they
>achieve state power, because the nation-state is a realm of hierarchy
>and exclusion. They also argue that the "nation" doesn't exist
>separately from a state - that it is, in fact, called into being by
>state formation - so that ethnicized exclusion is part of the
>pacakge. I'm not completely convinced, but it's a coherent theory.
Although the nation-state is necessarily "a realm of hierarchy and exclusion" since not everybody can have formal power at once, it doesn't follow that "ethnicized exclusion is part of the package". The Republicans are learning that capitalist domination doesn't really have an ethnic component, as are the leaders of the Euro-zone. Political leaderships may develop around ethnic centers but that works counter to forming a state unless they offer something more. The state, even in the days of Rome, had to show the people something more than ethnicity to be successful. Ethnicity, after all, is a very fluid concept and people adopt and reject them at will. Peoples under Roman domination gave up their own ethnicities in order to join the Roman elite. They got over that hump of abandoning their cultures not simply because Rome offered a military stick but because it offered a socio-economic carrot.
Kabila in the former Zaire, for example, offered only a military stick and failed. There was no carrot of an enlightened or efficient social order to offer. By contrast, the ANC succeeded when it became clear they did not threaten the important *positive* aspects of the capitalist system. Once Mandela was out of prison it became undeniable that here was a unified, organized corps of serious people who could run South African society without wrecking it. I personally believe that the transformation of the ANC from a protest party to a real ruling party was part of the reason that the Zulus finally succumbed to police provocation and Inkatha went after ANC supporters. All Inkatha had was ethnic unity and they played that card the way it always ends up getting played: through ethnic violence. Inkatha's ethnic unity was politically inferior to the broader ethnic base and serious socio-economic thinking coming out of the ANC.
The Hardt/Negri theory, as you explain it, seems to be missing the point. The ethnic character of political movements may be inevitable but it's the lowest form of political power. What unsuccessful regimes lack is a political economy that transcends ethnicity. It's the quality of the state that predicts its longevity. It's silly to say that the state as such is not viable.
peace
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