[lbo-talk] Noticed an oddity

Wojtek Sokolowski swsokolowski at yahoo.com
Mon Mar 24 10:10:41 PDT 2008


--- Sandy Harris <sandyinchina at gmail.com> wrote:


> Different language, ethnicity and culture, their own
> government.
> What happened to self-determination? Isn't it
> Tibetans who get
> to decide if they're part of China?

[WS:] Self-determination is a tricky concept. It has built in a fallacy that treats grous as if they were single individulas.

Self-determination makes perfect sense when applied to individuals, because the entity that demands being left alone from outside influence is the very same entity that is to be left alone - the self in both instances. When it comes to groups, however, things are becoming more and more tricky when the size of the group increase.

Take for example 'self-determination'of the family unit. It is usually demanded by those who speak for the whole group - such as the patriarch. Nobody asks children's opinion on the subject and nobody would take that opinion seriously if offered. Self-determination in that context means that a person claiming to be a "representive" of a group dem,ands the right to do with that group as he pleases without fearing out-group intervention.

While it can be said that a family unit has a certain level of social integration that justifies 'speking with one voice' which happened to be that of the head of the househld - this is certainly nonsense when it comes to larger groups, such as villages, tribes, nations, etc. In such situations, it invariably some self-styled leader who posits himself as the only legitimate spokesperson for that group, presumably expressing undivided desires and interests of the entire group, and demanding that his role in that group is not challenged by out-group influences.

What I find disingenuous is that people who are eager to dismiss claims of "national unity" when it comes to Western societies - e.g. by pointing class, ethnic or gender conflicts in such societies - suddenly start talking about "self-determination" of backward non-Western societies as if they were undivided by any class interests nations. James Heartfield was right on the target in his critique of romanticizing such backward societies. I would like to go a step further and say that the notion of self determination, when applied to groups and nations is always right wing and reactionary, because it invariably implies the primacy of national interests over all other interests and the domination by an elite claiming to represent those national interests. This applies to all 'pet nations'of Western intellectuals, be it Tibet, Palestine, Kosovo, Chechnya, or Iran.

Wojtek

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