Nationalisms of settler colonialists and anti-colonial nationalisms of the colonized are not the same thing and do not occupy the same place in leftist politics.
Also, it is too simplistic to set up an either/or choice between nationalism and global capitalism, especially in that it is the latter that begets the former in all its varieties.
One might very well see left-wing nationalism and left-wing internationalism as complementary:
***** NATIONALISM AND GLOBALISM: SOCIAL MOVEMENT RESPONSES JAMES GOODMAN The University of Technology of Sydney funded the research on which this article is based.
. . . Debates about nationalism and internationalism are often posed in simplistic either-or terms. Detractors of nationalism accuse nationalists of reliance on exclusivist or identarian politics, advocates of nationalism accuse internationalists of idealism and implicit imperialism (Keane 1994; Cardus and Estruch 1995). Invariably, nationalism and nationalist movements are defined against other more universalist ideologies and social movements, in an assumed dichotomy between particularism and universalism. What is defined as particular and universal depends very much on power relations, with cosmopolitans, especially in core states, blind to their own particularism (Furedi 1994).
Uneven development and nationalism
. . . In 1977 Tom Nairn defined nationalism as a "Modern Janus" - one face looking to the future, a vehicle for social transformation, the other looking to the past, reproducing social subordination. He saw nationalism as "both healthy and morbid", reflecting its origins as a necessary outcome of global capitalism - not chosen as the vehicle for political change, but imposed by the logic of capitalist development (Nairn 1977).
For Nairn, the persistence of nationalism directly results from the globalizing spread and deepening reach of capitalism. For him, nationalism was imposed by uneven development: nationalist self-determination is a "grim necessity of modern social development" (Nairn 1977). Hence, nationalism's "real origins are...located not in the folk, not in the individual's repressed passion for some sort of wholeness or identity, but in the machinery of world political economy" (Nairn 1977). Nairn argues that without a national state apparatus to gain some autonomy in the global economy, industrial development means domination. The only way for people to "contest the concrete form in whichŠ'progress' had taken them by the throat" is to construct their own national state (Nairn 1977). The prediction of liberal thinkers on international politics that global commerce would lead to global social harmony could not have been more mistaken. On the contrary, the over-riding power of global capital is seen as continually reproducing nationalism and generating rather than abating inter-national conflicts.
Here, Nairn's position parallels that of Benedict Anderson, who stresses the cultural and political dimensions of uneven development in reproducing new forms of nationalism (Anderson 1991). Like Nairn, Anderson argues nationalism is a profoundly modern imagining, not about to be dissolved in the global context (Anderson 1993).
Internationality and internationalism
In 1997 Nairn returned to his Janus, updating and extending the analysis. The key position was restated, that nationalism, "far from being an irrational obstacle to development, was for most societies the only feasible way into the development race - the only way they could compete without being either colonized or annihilated" (Nairn 1997). Numerous illustrations of this dialectic were provided, along with a powerful critique of what was characterized as crude internationalism. This critique was important as it emphasized that cosmopolitan internationalism was - and is - a creed of the centre: "There is the same crypto-imperialist streak in the proletarian internationalist ideology as there was in the liberal and free trade dogmas that lent themselves so well to Anglo-Saxon Europe" (Nairn 1997). The same could be said, and has been said, of some contemporary versions of environmental cosmopolitanism, of feminist cosmopolitanism, and of human rights cosmopolitanism.
But Nairn doesn't close the door on internationalism. While condemning forms of internationalism founded on the denial of nationalism, he raises the possibility of an internationalism that is, instead, defined through its interactions with nationalism. This alternative internationalism can be seen as expressing the wider dialectical relationships between international integration - what he calls internationality - and nationalist fragmentation in the globalized capitalist system. As Nairn argues, "internationalism and nationalism are, in a curious way, perfectly twin ideologies. They are parts of a single overall modern thought world" (Nairn 1997).
(_The International Scope Review_ 4.8, Winter 2002, <http://www.internationalscope.com/journal/volume%202002/issue%208/pdf/goodman.pdf>) *****
***** National Identities Publisher: Carfax Publishing Company, part of the Taylor & Francis Group Issue: Volume 5, Number 3 / November 2003 Pages: 235 - 249
Nationalism and cosmopolitanism: irreconcilable differences or possible bedfellows?*
Brett Bowden A1
A1 Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Abstract:
Sparked by the recent reinvigoration of the long-running debate over the competing ideological merits of nationalism and cosmopolitanism by leading Western philosophers, this article presents an argument as to how these two adversarial projects might be reconciled. In a review of both ideological perspectives, it is argued that neither paradigm is adequate in its own right, and that both contain potential dangers. However, both nationalism and cosmopolitanism entail important complementary aspects that are essential in bringing about a more stable and innocuous synthesis of the two projects.
Keywords:
Nationalism, Patriotism, Cosmopolitanism, Pluralism, Political ideology
The references of this article are secured to subscribers.
-- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>