Nation states as font of freedom

[joanna bujes]

At 02:46 PM 10/19/2001 -0400, Carrol wrote:
>I think that on individualist premises (individuals exist and existed
>prior to and autonomously of any social relations) Hobbes has got it
>right (war of all against all). Clearly on that premise an individual
>only exists on the basis of power (force) he (she?) can exercise, and
>all social relations (including nation states) are the result of
>opportunistic alliances among discrete (isolated) individuals.
>
>But if social relations are prior to (and _relatively_) independent of
>the concrete or historical individual, then (as Hobbes recognized)
>freedom _emerges from_ rather than is in contradiction to social
>relations. Hobbes assumed those social relations must take the form of
>the absolute state, but that is not a necessary implication. _At the
>present time_, however, the only possible forms those social relations
>can take are manifested in (dependent on) the nation state (whatever may
>be the case in the future). Hence for this historical epoch the
>rejection of the nation state is the rejection of the possibility of
>human freedom.

Huh? "For this historical epoch, the rejection of the nation state is the 
rejection of the possibility of human freedom." Huh?

It seems there is also the possiblity, fully exploited by the Taliban for 
example, of building parallel institutions - educational, religious, 
international. All this is beginning to remind me of an interview with 
Castro some twenty years ago. The inteviewer asked Castro whether he 
foresaw the possibility of revolution in the US. (The interviewer was 
clearly prepared for a positive answer.) Castro, however said, No, he 
didn't. Then the interviewer was kind of miffed: subtext: "What do you mean 
we can't have a revolution? We're Americans, we can have anything we 
want..." So Castro said, something like "Well, in order to have a 
revolution, you have to have a unshakable will and purpose, but in your 
culture, you're will is diverted every ten minutes (by commercial 
propaganda). You don't know how to have a firm purpose." The assumption of 
power by the Taliban was predicated 1) on the absence of a national center 
of power in Afghanistan and 2) on a decade long investment in "educating" 
the Taliban's cadre in religious schools.

The discussion in LBO so far bears witness to our cultural 
short-sightedness and our propensity to despair when a short term practical 
solution is not obvious. BUT, actually, we are in a situation where the US 
state is being increasingly discredited/weakened by its inability to manage 
the economic, social, and individual well being of the citizens of this 
state. In response, it is "toughening" up its policies, repression, 
etc...which actually only underlines its weakness. If, in the face of this, 
the left could organize an opposition based on building a non-consumerist, 
cooperative shadow economy AND if every lefty intellectual could commit to 
giving up their remunirative/high status job to go into the schools and 
teach (for ten cents an hour) then, maybe, ten years from now, we'd have 
something to work with.

OK. You can skewer me now.

(Oh, and I'm pointing a finger first of all to myself as the sort of 
intellectual I referred to above.)

Joanna Bujes