>Doug Henwood wrote:
>>
>>
>> Could it be that the goal of "national unity and political
>> sovereignty" turned out to be mostly an unattainable fantasy?
>
>This is equivalent to saying that the goal of human survival in the 21st
>century has turned out to be an unattainable fantasy. I have seen on
>LBO-talk so deeply hopeless a post as this one.
Carrol, there's a long and honorable tradition in left thought that's skeptical of or hostile to nationalism and the state. Even Marx himself had one foot in that camp, with the dream of a withering away of the state and the delcaration that the workers have no country. I don't see that as hopeless at all; I see what I wrote as a call for a rethink of some fundamental principles - just like Lenin engaged in after the soc dem parties supported their countries in WW I. Why did so many of the movements of national liberation end so badly?
Doug