I have no problem with Doug's remark about Israeli policy as exemplifying the problems with nationalism, except perhaps that it misses some important complications. Israeli policy is based on a sort of fictitious ethno-religious kind of nationalism, according to which I, an atheist but culturally observant Ashkenazi Jew whose ancestors hailed from Russia, Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary, and have never been to the Middle East, have a special claim to the land of Palestine, er, Israel, that the Palestinians whose families have lived there for thousands of years, simply because according to the Halechkic law, my mother was Jewish (Hungary and Russia via New York), and the same with _her_ mother (New York via Hungary), and her mother (Hungary), etc, etc.
Moreover the government of Israel, in which I have no representation, claims to speak for me, demands that I support its militaristic racism. That's the theory of Zionism as practiced in America, anyway.
Now, ever nationalism is different, but American nationalism is a bit different, for example. It has a religious component, but we also have a sacred Constitution that prevents the establishment of any religion, so the Christian nation types are discomfited; they are hard put to worship both our founding instrument and insist that only those washed in the blood of the lamb can be 'Muricans. (However the human capacity for doublethink is endless.) US nationalism is somewhat more inclusive, since we're supposed to be both white Anglo American Protestant and cultural, religious, and ethnic melting pot.
On the other hand we are far less ideologically tolerant than the Israelis. You cannot be a commie pinko and be good 'Murican, whereas Israel, although its secular socialist roots are long withered, allows commies and pinkos to count as full participants is Israeli Jewish society. The main thing in 'Murica is that you have to believe, really believe, that this is The Greatest Country In The World. Then you're In, pretty much, whoever your mother was, and as long as you are not Muslim.
The nation-state, however, is different from nationalism -- a cultural phenomenon rather than a doctrine, nationalism, I think -- there were nation-states before nationalism was invented, and there might be territorially organized political units where a governmental power claims the monopoly of legitimate force in the territory (what else is a nation state? and can't you tell I was trained as a political scientist?), without the citizenry having the sort of emotion attachment to the entity, whatever it is, that you need for nationalism.
Actually I think that in many of the smaller European states things are moving in that direction. Belgian nationalism is a pretty watered down affair compared to US nationalism or Zionism. ("This is a pretty nice place to live," my Belgian friends say the prevailing attitude is there, despite some linguistic/cultural tensions between the Flemings and the Walloons.) And of course there is racism is Belgium, but unless the immigration issue has changed things there as it did in the Netherlands, that is not yet nationalism.
The problem with going beyond the nation state, although in a sense we are doing that already, that is what globalization is about, yes? And capital long ago went multinational -- that the alternative seem to be (a) world government, which is problematic and not in the cards, (b) Balkanization, which can get ugly (there really is something to that territorial monopoly of legitimate force), or (c) anarchy, which does not seem practical or in the cards. Marx may have had something else in mind but he forget to tell us what it is.
> Look, while I can't follow Angelus into his
> stateless place of pure
> communism, he does have a point about nationalism.
> In fact, Israeli
> policy really crystallizes in pure form a lot of the
> trouble with
> that doctrine (and it's no accident, is it, that
> Zionism arose along
> with a lot of other reactionary nationalisms in the
> 19th century?):
> the denial of divisions within the national body,
> and the creation of
> external enemies against which the nation is
> defined. While Israel
> may be an extreme case, there are plenty of other
> instances. I
> remember from my visit to Australia in 2001 the
> paranoia about Asians
> overrunning the old white country (even Greeks are
> racialized as
> dusky, no?) - even an anxiety about foreign invaders
> overwhelming
> native marine life documented on a sign at the
> Hobart waterfront. And
> the USA, too - we're full of anxieties about
> external threats, and
> proclaiming the rightness of the Good American. I
> can't think of a
> practical way to get beyond the nation-state, but it
> is pleasing to
> dream about it.
>
> Doug
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com