 Battle for the nation
state
Alex Gordon, Morning
Star, London, 18 March 2010
Monopoly capital and
the forces of so-called "globalisation" face yet another deep crisis.
This has awakened new interest in the ideas of Karl Marx, which have
proved much more resilient than the forces of imperialist globalisation
have claimed.
The international
banking system has been temporarily saved from complete meltdown, but
only by the extensive intervention of the state with public money.
If the situation were
not so serious, we may even have been amused to witness the spectacle
of those who once claimed the total victory of global markets, the "end
of history" itself and the death of the nation state scrambling for
government bail-outs and demanding state intervention.
Over the last 40 years
the drive for world market integration has unleashed and intensified
competitive pressures on capital and labour.
Capital markets now
have a global reach and capital flows have increased in speed and
volume. This has undermined "normal" democratic policy cycles.
These factors weaken
the ability of organised labour to resist economic exploitation and of
nation states to regulate economic activity.
Labour practices such
as offshoring and flagging out - the operation of commercial
ocean-going vessels under "flags of convenience" to avoid health and
safety and social legislation - have thrown into doubt the ability of
the state to act as a regulator of markets.
The primary vehicles
for limiting nations' rights of nations to self-determination and for
removing sovereignty are the G8, the International Monetary Fund, the
North American Free Trade Agreement bloc and the European Union.
However, by unleashing
the forces of capital with little or no regard to the consequences
no-one has been immune from the fallout. The weakening and total
removal of political and economic levers to deal with the crises at a
national level is simply intensifying the nature and depth of the
malaise.
The imperialist war
machine has developed as the military wing of corporate globalisation
over the same period to deny, where necessary, the right to
self-determination enshrined in the UN charter.
Nato secretary-general
Lord Robertson declared in 1999 that the "Rubicon had been crossed"
with the illegal attacks on Yugoslavia. Imperialist military
intervention has been dressed up in post-modern, media-friendly terms
like "humanitarian war" and "nation building."
Despite the now
obvious limitations of letting global capital rip without any
meaningful restraints, there is clearly a great deal of confusion as to
how workers should respond to the present crisis.
An honest appraisal of
the left's response to imperialist globalisation must accept that
regrettably there has been a significant tendency to adapt to the logic
of market dominance and to post-modernism, the ideology that developed
in tandem with it.
Marxian slogans such
as "Workers of all lands, unite" and "The working men have no country"
have been appropriated as crude justifications for the proposition that
the nation state is, indeed, dead.
These death notices,
to paraphrase Mark Twain, have proven to be greatly exaggerated.
Marx also had to deal
with such idealism in his own time. The Proudhonists famously wanted to
"abolish nationalities in the interests of the social revolution." Marx
calmly responded by asking whether this meant we must all become French.
The present crisis of
capitalism and massive attacks on the idea of the nation state and
democracy demand that we return to "the national question" with sober
senses, as Marx would have it.
To begin with, we must
understand that nowhere did Marx write of nations themselves
disappearing, only of the "vanishing of antagonisms between peoples."
Marx's immediate call
to action to the working class was to take from their oppressors what
had been denied them.
In the Communist
Manifesto he wrote: "Since the proletariat must first of all acquire
political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation,
must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national,
though not in the bourgeois sense of the word."
The battle for
democracy in this country had been raging long before those words were
written down. The first trade unionists asserted freedom of
association. The Chartists demanded universal adult male suffrage,
secret ballots, abolition of property qualifications and payment of
MPs, equal constituencies and annual parliaments in their struggles for
political representation to effect economic change.
At that time, the
modern nation state was a relatively new concept born of rationalism
and enlightenment.
The French serf had
only recently become a citizen of the republic. The New England farmer
had defeated their British rulers a few years earlier to become a
citizen of the United States. The ensuing struggles against slavery and
the American civil war were played out in a clearly national context.
These modern
developments have continued since the second world war with the growth
of the United Nations. Nearly 200 countries sit in the UN general
assembly - so much for the death of the nation state.
Even imperialist,
supranational organisations such as Nato and the European Union have
had to create nation states - for example the client statelet of Kosovo
- and oppose the creation of others for their own geopolitical purposes.
However the overriding
logic and purpose of the EU is to hollow out the democratic structures
of states and incrementally to transfer law-making powers to unelected,
undemocratic, supranational institutions in Brussels through treaties
and directives.
This anti-democratic,
slow-motion revolution in reverse has gone unnoticed by many voters and
most political commentators, who still see the Westminster Parliament
as the key citadel of state power in Britain.
This is why the debate
over many contemporary political and social issues in Britain has such
an unreal quality.
On the question of
railway privatisation most voters in Britain support renationalisation.
Yet how many voters are aware that an EU directive orders the
separation of train operations from rail infrastructure? How many know
that the European Commission prohibits democratic political control
over railway investment and ownership by elected governments?
Faceless bureaucrats
are imposing rail privatisation on member states using EU directives.
Other neoliberal EU
directives, such as those for general services, postal services, health
services and numerous EU rulings and treaties, are designed to hand
public services to the private sector, further restricting the power of
elected governments to respond to the needs of their electorates.
Imperialist,
supranational bodies such as the EU are seeking to roll back democratic
advances achieved in previous centuries. Not content simply to defeat
and scatter forces for socialism, modern imperialism seeks not "the end
of history," but to reverse history.
Progressive forces
must respond to this threat by defending and restoring national
democracy. Ultimately, national independence is required for democracy
to flourish. The freedom of all nations to develop without external,
imperialist interference should be the touchstone for our understanding
of Marxism in the modern context.
National independence
should once again play a decisive role in the defeat of the parasitic
class, which has no more interest in the fortunes of workers and their
families than an economic army of occupation.
As Marx said, "capital
is reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless
under compulsion from society" - by which, I believe, he meant the
state.
Marx also said that
democracy is the road to socialism. The war for democracy is yet to be
won, but the army of labour is crying out for the battle to be rejoined.
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