From: "Chris Burford" <cburford at gn.apc.org>
> The nation state as the unit of international affairs has not just
been
> discredited. It has been superseded economically.
========== Chris, I'm not sure it's a matter of the NS being discredited as simply being knocked off the perch in the institutional hierarchy with regards to the processes whereby the world market is, for lack of a better term, consolidating and distributing powers to lots of different agents that are only interested using the state system as means to their own ends.
This is really nothing new, but the complexity of the ideas and policies that must be put in place for accumulation to continue are staggering and it is becoming increasingly apparent to the world's peoples that, as the neo-Gramscian Robert Cox puts it, "the state is tributary to something greater than the state." If there is something to Leslie Sklair's idea of a "transnational capitalist class" that is increasingly focused on producing and securing a domain of supranational law, then it is precisely "there" that we cannot afford not to focus on demanding global insitutions that respect democratic norms. To that extent "the national interest" becomes something that must become problematized; especially after 9-11. Political Ecology and human rights seem, at this stage of the struggle, to be two of the best sets of analytical tools for telling the kinds of stories that may connect with peoples concerns. It's all well and good to think that in the future, we'll al be so effortlessly egalitarian in our outlook and behavior that we won't need rights discourse, but right now we need it more than ever, unless people can think of something better to replace it with. PE discourse was making great headway since "Seattle." In that sense 9-11 was real depressing from a strategic standpoint. It remains to be seen whether we can use Rio +10 to refocus our efforts on keeping poverty and inequality, and the ways capitalism perpetuates them, on the "global attention span." The atroc ity and the US government response is going to make it very difficult to keep our eye on the ball but we have to try.
>
> The nation state is associated with the efforts of the rising
bourgeoisie
> to capture a home market, and to free production from the fetters of
> non-capitalist relations.
>
> What is apparently discussed in creative universities, and
considered by
> people like Henry Kissinger, as the "Westphalian System" is in fact
a
> matter of political economy, of the changes in the economic base.
The rise
> of the capitalist mode of production in its early phase, and its
overcoming
> the limits of the nation state in its mature phase.
>
> Western Europe can no longer develop its economic power even within
the
> confines of the European Union. It needs an integrated market with a
single
> currency to compete effectively with the USA in the world.
>
> James Heartfield is correct when he says
>
> > The European powers are determined to use the crisis to lock
> >the United States into an international diplomatic process.
>
> The crunch for left-wingers is whether the best way of resisting US
> hegemonism is to defend the rights of the nation state.
==========
No. It is to demand democratic norms of accountability in both national and supranational institutions and on the terrain of commerce [corporations] and industrial organization. Here we face Arrow's paradox with a vengeance. How to cultivate an *ethos* of democracy that spills onto politics. Here we could take a clue from the claimed "victory" in the culture wars. Deepen the calls for the liberation all women and men irrespective of "race" and class and nationality. Not only equality before the law, but equality in the production of the law. This would mean calling political parties that cater to their financiers for what they are, protection rackets. We need to delgitimize the dominant *political parties* more than anything else, they only use the state as Jagdish Bhagwati puts it, "as the clearinghouse government approach to political economy." [Political Economy and International Economics, p. 155]. Torben Dyrberg goes into problematizing terms like "the public interest" and the like better than anything I've come across in a long time, as does David Held's critique of Joseph Schumpeter's view of the State in "Models of Democracy."
>
> This dividied many progressives. Although Milosevic had little
chance of
> creating a national capitalist state out of Yugoslavia, many thought
it
> more important to oppose the imperialist dismemberment of Yugoslavia
even
> if that was at the price of the self-determination of a muslim
people like
> the Kosovans. My own view was that the nation state was largely past
and it
> was more important to support the democratic rights of all working
people,
> to lay the basis for cooperation again in the future, and that
hegemonic
> powers who were on the scene ought to be challenged on the morality
of what
> they were doing there, if they could not protect such bourgeois
democratic
> rights. Nor did I think that the state in question had any serious
chance
> of preserving a form of socialism, particularly if it violated
proletarian
> internationalism.
>
> Time has accelerated the processes that James Heartfield describes.
At
> least one million Kosovans were able to return home. At least the
people of
> East Timor (another dubious statelet) were able to stay on their
land, as a
> result of interference by the global hegemons.
>
> The attack on the WTC now goads the USA into proving its ability to
control
> the bodies of armed men who set the boundaries of state power. In
the
> course of this the new terrain of struggle becomes apparent: the
political
> and economic justice of the system of global governance, which is to
> replace the nation state. Even Iran is being drawn by the UK into
the
> "coalition".
========== The NS ain't going away anytime soon, as Doug and others have pointed out, unless there is substantial collective action to bring it about. The forms of analyses, normative and otherwise, whereby people come to see the NS itself as a barrier to ending oppression is a process we should participate in vigorously and track closely.
>
> No: there is no point in demonstrating to protest that the
sovereignty and
> territorial integrity of Afghanistan is about to be violated,
despite the
> eloquence and courage of a Robert Fisk. There is every point in
protesting
> that the interventions may be crude and militaristic, rather than
> facilitating a democratic process of peace and reconciliation.
Combining a
> moral argument with an argument of real politik - there is no point
either
> for the USA in precipitating an unplanned radical islamic coup in
Saudi
> Arabia or in Pakistan.
========= The US elite will never call for democracy as the left, saii, understands that concept, in the Middle East and Central Asia. Also, what is missing, and is a troublesome form of Western naivete, is how to get from Islamic theology and law which is the core of partiarchical oppression in many countries, to an *ethos* of democratic norms of equality. This means taking up Robert Cox's suggestion that Westerner's spend time studying Ibn Khaldun, a man considered a genius by many accounts, .
>
> There is also every point in challenging US hegemonism on its
leadership of
> the global economy and of the protection of the environment. Global
> communications are moving fast beyond the bounds of the nation
state. So
> must our strategic picture of the terrain of struggle.
>
> Chris Burford
>
> London
================
Yup.
Ian