💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › miguel-amoros-nostalgia-for-origins.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 12:26:37. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Nostalgia for Origins Author: Miguel AmorĂłs Date: October 18, 2007 Language: en Topics: capitalism, globalization, language, nationalism, the state Source: Retrieved on 11th May 2021 from https://libcom.org/library/nostalgia-origins-miguel-amor%C3%B3s Notes: Translated in December 2012 from the Spanish text obtained from the website of the Spanish journal, Argelaga: https://argelaga.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/la-nostalgia-de-los-origenes/.
“Undaunted youths, go, seek that mother earth
From which your ancestors derive their birth.
The soil that sent you forth, her ancient race
In her old bosom shall again embrace.”
Virgil, The Aeneid
The dissolution of all social bonds that are not reducible to
transactions that bear within themselves the total reign of the
commodity over human life arouses two kinds of reactions: one rational,
and the other foreign to Reason. The first reaction was concretized in a
radical democratism that broke with bourgeois liberalism to converge
with a socialist anti-capitalism, with its first most incisive variant,
in our view, being the anarchist naturist school. But the annihilation
of memory that goes hand in hand with commodity colonization favors
irrationality to the detriment of reflection and historical critique,
and therefore it is also prejudicial to legitimate resistance to
capital, especially when this irrationality is expressed among rural
social groups, and is often manifested in sentimentalism, conservatism
and religious traditionalism [de manera … ultramontana]. Although the
first tentative expressions of anti-capitalism often speak the language
of religion, it is a struggle that only requires the consciousness of
what it is actually doing in order to become revolutionary. The local
impulse to rally around “the old laws”, tradition or the absolute
monarchy, which responded to the same causes as the millenarian peasant
revolts or the Luddite riots of the weavers and miners, occurred in
various locations on the Iberian peninsula during the 19^(th) century.
The deepest roots of regional nationalism were embedded during this era,
and in the case of the Basque Country they are quite evident, but
nationalism properly speaking is manifested in very diverse ways in
accordance with the class interests that use it as an ideological or
political umbrella, depending on the specific weight of the proletariat
and the degree of capitalist development that has been attained. At the
present time, now that the process of industrialization has culminated
in the transformation of society itself into one vast global industry,
when the standardizing steamroller of mass culture has abolished
differences, and when deracination is leading to nostalgia for lost
identity, many are those who share the search for their “mother earth”,
and nationalism, often mixed with other ideologies, is coming to the
fore. The question concerning what relation the nationalist polemic can
maintain with projects for social emancipation has different answers
depending on the type of nationalism involved and the specific
historical moment. To begin with we can say that at the present time
almost all identity-based nationalisms and patriotisms are in practice
alternative political approaches for carrying out capitalist
development, approaches that oppose central State regulation of
capitalist development, which is why their relation with freedom and the
end of oppression is nil. Precisely the most interesting part of
nationalism, and the most progressive in the human sense, that of its
romantic origins, that is, the defense of old customs and traditions,
communitarian institutions, egalitarianism, the rejection of the
industrialization process and, in general, everything that really sets
it apart, is the ballast which is being jettisoned in favor of an
extreme economic modernization that is supposed to set the standard for
and provide the new pattern for development in less developed nations.
Most contemporary nationalists do not want to defend their identity by
preserving their territory from global financial flows, but instead seek
to create a profitable local franchise that will attract those flows.
The development of regional metropolitan systems as nodes of the
networks of globalized capitalism provide them with the best
secessionist arguments: the conurbation-State is the most adequate
political form for economic globalization, the form that provides the
highest profits. This nationalism therefore defends the interests of the
local oligarchies that are intimately linked with world finance; the
differences that distinguish various nationalist trends, to the degree
that these differences have any meaning, respond to the variable impact
of the emerging middle classes in their schemas, which are more or less
oriented towards independence depending on the greater or lesser need
for or fear of the central State power.
Nationalism is based on the assumption of the existence of a separate,
homogeneous, ethnic population with its own interests, which speaks its
own language, has its own culture and therefore constitutes a nation. By
“historical right” it is supposed to be entitled to the development of
its own sovereign institutions, the products of the popular will, in the
framework of an independent State, with its parliament, its officials,
its police, its army, its judges and its borders. We shall attempt to
show that all of this is false. Everything that could define a people
has long since ceased to exist and for that reason there is no popular
will, either. The need for a national market created the central State,
ruined the local non-capitalist economies and abrogated their laws. The
rural areas were impoverished, their “historical” institutions were
abolished, their popular folklore and traditions were lost together with
all social relations extraneous to the economy (relations based on
reciprocity, mutual aid, the gift, redistribution, barter…), communal
lands were confiscated, guilds were dissolved, classes arose, migratory
movements were set in motion and, finally, the individual was uprooted
from his community and thrown onto the market. In the transition from a
pre-capitalist society to a capitalist society, populations were
gradually standardized and homogenized, that is, transformed into a
proletarianized social class. Any community or harmony of interests that
might have been able to exist among the Estates of the Ancien RĂ©gime
disappeared, erased by the capitalist intrusion into society. Economic
interest dominated every other kind of interest, popular culture passed
away and the popular language ceased to be used among the elites.
Despite the meritorious cultural renaissances linked to the local
intelligentsia or to bourgeois sectors in conflict with the State (due
to the unequal development of the ruling classes), the process
nonetheless continued, and with the appearance of mass culture, that is,
of the spectacle, of generalized entertainment, of the mass media, etc.,
language lost its validity as a vehicle of culture and means of
communication—any language—putting an end to its role as the last sign
of surviving identity. The current institutionalization of culture and
teaching of regional languages has the same effect as the erstwhile
institutionalization of Castilian culture and the promotion of the
national language: no language can be used to communicate. The modern
conditions of existence prevent any serious communication; language and
communication do not go hand in hand.
The uniformity achieved under capitalism means the end of peoples and
nations. The real content of popular resistance to the implications of
this standardization, that is, the resistance against the creation of a
market for money, land and labor, was distorted by the local bourgeoisie
and petty bourgeois by way of the contrivance of ethnic stereotypes and
national myths, the manipulation of history and the invention of a
spurious tradition amalgamated with folkloric residues. The nationalists
need a Golden Age whence they can extract idyllic images and fabulous
visions that serve as models for the patriotic imagination and their
electorate. This is never enough, however, and the active presence of
the militant proletariat, a new factor, forced the nationalist movements
to define themselves with respect to the proletarian movement. There was
no lack of individuals who discovered that the revolutionary working
class was the only subject capable of resolving the problem of the
national question. The proletariat, as “working people” and social
majority, became the depository of the essence of the fatherland. In
general, the diverse socialist tendencies reacted against this trend.
The anarchists, for example, opposed national independence in the name
of the unity of the proletariat, and opposed the formation of a new
State in the name of their principles. In its time, the CNT rejected the
Catalan statute, despite the fact that the majority of its members had
voted for the nationalist party, the ERC (the Catalan Republican Left),
because the proposed new State was conceived in accordance with
capitalist interests. The social revolution was real independence.
Proletarian federalism went even beyond the statist secessionist
movement, which diverted the attention of the workers and left
exploitation as it was. The CNT recognized the “Catalan people”, but not
the Catalan bourgeoisie; Catalonia was a country, but not a nationality.
Nation and State were only artificial creations. Catalonia would be free
only as a sum of federated municipalities, without borders, rather than
as a State. The defense of the oppressed Catalan culture and language
was perfectly compatible with the class struggle, for even though the
proletariat is internationalist and has no fatherland—its fatherland is
the world—it does have a language. Indeed, Catalonia was never more free
than during those two and a half months when it was ruled by the
Committee of Anti-fascist Militias, but this was not the kind of freedom
that was desired by the diverse interests camouflaged under the flag of
Catalanism, with the exception of those who were represented by the
POUM. These interests were transformed during the civil war into the
vanguard of the counterrevolution, excavating an abyss between the
workers and Catalan nationalism that has yet to be bridged. The
ephemeral resurgence of the workers movement in the sixties and
seventies gave way once again to a socialistic nationalism, and even led
to a certain type of anarcho-patriotism that hardly made any
contribution to the identity debate and even less to libertarian
theoretical renewal. The lure of lost roots caused the workers movement
to fall into the trap of recovered “identity”, endorsing with greater or
lesser enthusiasm the most suspect nationalist paraphernalia,
neo-folklore, flags, anthems, [linguistic and cultural] “normalization”
and subsidized culture, all of it presented by the local oligarchy as
the recovery of national identity, while it is actually nothing but the
obligatory supplementary curriculum for the subject who desires to
prosper in the new political framework.
Today—in the Iberian peninsula and, more generally, in the countries
where modern conditions of production and consumption prevail—there are
no peoples, and to prove this we shall note the decline of the birth
rate of the native population, the indisputable aging of the population
and the flood of immigrants that maintains the level of exploitation
that the functioning of the economy requires. Nor are there any specific
places or landscapes; unrestricted urbanization has merged the
countryside with the city by destroying both and scattering over the
surface of the land a single predatory model of territorial occupation.
Constant mobility has done the rest. There are no more real roots, or
particular ethnicities, or national interests, or any greater identity
than the one that is disseminated by the generalized uniform way of
life. Under the absolute rule of capital, amidst the full-blown
globalization of the economy, what causes people to resemble one
another, regardless of their background, is much greater than what sets
them apart. The levels of consumption or the degree of repression may
vary, but the standardizing tendencies are increasingly erasing any and
all differences. In a manner of speaking, everyone will end up either
singing along with the “Macarena” or hating it. Even racial mixing and
mixed race children are the inadvertent result of the planetary rule of
finance. There are more than fifty languages spoken in every
conurbation. The national interest is nothing but the interest of
international capital represented in the “national” territory by its
political-economic oligarchy. Only the oppressed are a nation. Does this
mean that nationalist demands are reactionary? Not necessarily; at least
not in their anti-capitalist and anti-centralist tendency. Not as the
historic reference to a life outside the market and separate from the
bourgeois State. It is reactionary, however, as bourgeois mystification
and an alibi for leaders. It is reactionary as spectacle. The struggle
against the oppression of the tide of globalization is essentially a
local struggle and a struggle for the reassertion of local rights, but
everywhere it is the same; freedom must start from the bottom,
concretizing in local forms, direct relations, communities speaking
their own languages, and this, without deviating from the cosmopolitan
exigencies, will lead us to the real discovery of the past. This does
not involve a return to the past, or disinterring an extinguished
society, or giving life to a mummified people, forgetting about the rest
of the world. It is not a return of the kind recommended by the god
Apollo to Aeneas in our quotation from Virgil. It is rather a matter of
recovering memory, identifying the point where society first took its
demented turn, discovering in the old wisdom and the old collective
practices of the peoples, but not only in them, the forms of a lost
freedom, with the intention of availing ourselves of them in our modern
anti-capitalist battles. It is in this historical connection between
past and present, between local experience and the polyglot reality,
that, in order to orient ourselves by real radical struggles—struggles
that go to the root—we shall all have to find the signs of our future
identity.