[lbo-talk] Susan Abulhawa on WITBD for Palestine (rights vs.statehood

Eric Beck ersatzdog at gmail.com
Sun Oct 16 09:45:30 PDT 2011


The opposition between state and rights seems odd. It's hard to see how they could operate without each other: Rights need states to define and enforce them, states need rights to define and name its subjects.

Doug says: "Statehood is a goal that can unite people as they fight for it." Has this ever happened? I don't know of any instance, and it's hard to imagine how it could happen in any society that has class struggle. Which is to say, no society that exists. This is why nationalism was "invented"--to give state formation a basis that bypassed capital-labor antagonism. Statehood is not a social bond anyone believes in or can fight for, and so it can only exist when it's grafted on to other forms.



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