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Title: Nationalism or Freedom? Author: Jon Bekken Date: 2001 Language: en Topics: anti-nationalism, anarchist analysis Source: Anarcho-Syndicalist Review 32 (Sep 30, 2001): page 26 Notes: Scanned from original.
Writing in the most recent Arsenal, a well-produced "magazine of
anarchist strategy and culture," Mike Staudenmaier devotes one of the
leading articles to a critique of ASR's "extensive and influential
writings opposing nationalism and advocating working-class
internationalist revolution." (Unfortunately, he cannot be troubled to
cite any of them, perhaps recognizing that his muddled argument could
not stand up to any anarchist writings on the subject.)
According to Staudenmaier, we follow the "people, not nations" analysis
he attributes to Rudolf Rocker, "combin[ing] the sort of economic
reductionism that is often the hallmark of syndicalism with careful
analysis of the harsh experiences of the Cuban revolution." Our
color-blind position that "working people have no country" was
revolutionary a century ago, he continues, but today is a manifestation
of white supremacy responsible for the overwhelmingly white membership
of "one of the best-recruiting and most steadily growing segments North
American anarchism."
Citing our criticism of Chomsky's suggestion that in this era of
globalization, the nation-state can serve as a mechanism for popular
self-defense (and strangely arguing that the Brazilian nation-state,
which routinely murders homeless children on the street, aids and abets
transnational corporations in despoiling Brazil's abundant natural
resources, and forces landless peasants into debt peonage, is less
repressive than the IMF), Staudenmaier says we fail to acknowledge the
substantial divisions within global economic classes posed by racial and
national identities. These divisions, he argues, create the possibility
of "meaningful cross-class alliances ... difficult to assimilate into a
syndicalist world view." (13)
In a typically confused passage he then conflates race, culture and
nation, and claims that syndicalists say that the struggle for racial
justice must be put off until after the anti-capitalist revolution
(which, Staudenmaier suggests, is exactly backward). Conceding that
syndicalists are "sincerely anti-racist," he argues that we
"underestimate the importance of cultural identity to people's lives and
to social struggles," thereby leading revolutionaries into a dead-end.
After some muted criticisms of anarcho-nationalist tendencies, which
have led many who consider (or once considered) themselves anarchists
into backing a variety of Marxist-Leninist groupings (a significant
fraction of the now-dissolved Love & Rage Federation recently joined the
Maoist Freedom Road Socialist Organization) for ignoring class struggle,
the author turns from setting up his straw men to putting forward his
own perspective:
"Where ASR offers the false dichotomy between people and nations, the
ABCF upholds a similarly questionable opposition between `oppressor
nationalism' ... and `nationalism of the oppressed' ...[But] in both
cases, the social experience at a grassroots level is the same -
cultural identity rooted in geography, language and assorted historical
intangibles, producing a broad-based love and prioritization of a
community of communities." (15) Staudenmaier rejects this attempt to
separate what he sees as inextricably intertwined positive and negative
aspects of national identity. Instead he champions what he admits is an
ad hoc analysis, skeptical of national liberation struggles while
supporting them, "recit[ing] rhetoric about class struggle" while
working with radicals of all class backgrounds (he apparently believes
there are significant numbers of the employing class to be found in the
anarchists' ranks, something I have never observed), and calling upon
activists to embrace the contradictions.
Anarchist support for the EZLN (the Zapatistas) is offered as an example
"of this promising new anarchist response to nationalism," (16) citing
Marcos' embrace of "the nation" in a typically incoherent quote. But for
Staudenmaier the Zapatistas embody an anti-statist nationalism,
apparently because they have recognized that they are in no position to
seize state power and so instead negotiate with the state and pressure
it to change its policies. Unwilling to embrace nationalism fully,
Staudenmaier instead urges us to "participate in and/or lend support to
anti-colonial struggles in a principled and critical way ... Anarchists
must become involved in a critical way in what Marcos calls the
`reconstruction' of the nation, which can only happen if we avoid the
twin pitfalls of knee-jerk anti-nationalism and uncritical acquiescence
to national liberation. By balancing the competing claims of race and
class, we can develop a new anarchist understanding of nations and
nationalism." (17)
I apologize if this summary seems incoherent; while I have endeavored to
distill a coherent argument from seven pages of confusion, this is at
best a difficult task. I undertake this thankless task only because
Staudenmaier is quite mistaken when he describes our writings on this
question as "influential." In fact, most North American anarchists today
embrace the muddled thinking he advocates, with devastating results. In
upholding the traditional anarchist opposition to nationalism (although
our recent writings on the subject have hardly been extensive, and have
tended to discuss the Middle East far more than Cuba), we have waged a
difficult and usually lonely struggle for fundamental anarchist
principles.
Staudenmaier's argument relies upon an almost total exclusion of
evidence, allowing patently false claims such as that syndicalists argue
that the struggle for racial justice must be postponed until after The
Revolution to stand cheek by jowl with highly questionable
characterizations of various nation-states and nationalist movements.
Failing to critically engage the one example of "progressive"
nationalism he discusses (the Zapatistas), he leaves readers with no
concrete sense of what this "new anarchist understanding" might look
like in actual practice, or why we might consider it to be in any way
anarchist.
Staudenmaier is unable even to keep his core concept clear. He offers
two definitions of nationalism: a common language and shared geography
(11) and cultural identity rooted in geography, language and historical
intangibles (15). These definitions are quite useless in understanding
actually existing nationalism. In the Balkans, for example, the
allegedly intractable nationalisms there (we leave aside the high levels
of intermarriage and other such inconvenient facts) have nothing
whatever to do with language (Serbian and Croatian are the same
language, only the script in which they are written differs) or
geography (the populations are completely intermingled, thus the
necessity for "ethnic cleansing"). This confusion is not entirely his
fault. The "nation" is an essentially mythic concept, its signifiers
chosen arbitrarily by ideologues seeking to unite followers against the
"other" or to conceal real conflicting interests behind a facade of
national unity.
As Mikhail Bakunin (whose understanding of nationalism was far more
complex than Staudenmaier's), noted: "There is nothing more absurd and
at the same time more harmful, more deadly, for the people than to
uphold the fictitious principle of nationalism as the ideal of all the
people's aspirations. Nationality is not a universal human principle; it
is a historic, local fact. ... We should place human, universal justice
above all national interests." While consistently defending the
principle of self-determination, Bakunin (whose political activity began
in pan-Slavism) came to see nationalism (and its corollary, patriotism)
as a manifestation of backwardness. "The less developed a civilization
is, and the less complex the basis of its social life, the stronger the
manifestation of natural patriotism."
Bakunin also termed nationalism a "natural fact" that had to be reckoned
with. Indeed, nationalism does exist, in precisely the same sense that
dementia does. There are many people in the world who hear God giving
them orders - sometimes cruel, sometimes bizarre, sometimes quite
humane - or who see hallucinations. While these unfortunates insist upon
the reality of their visions, we know better. Such things simply do not
exist, for all that thousands of our fellow humans act upon them. But
the mental disorder that sparks these delusions quite certainly exists.
Sometimes it is relatively harmless and can perhaps be ignored, though I
tend to believe symptoms should be responded to before the disease gets
worse. Sometimes the derangement is quite serious, and must be
confronted forcefully.
In precisely the same way, we can say that nationalism exists, even
though there is no useful sense in which "nations" can be said to exist,
except as an artificial construct imposed by states, churches and other
powers to suit their own interests.
Nations are in fact inventions of relatively recent origin. Five hundred
years ago, the language we now know as "French" was a family of loosely
related regional tongues that were not mutually intelligible. The
"Italian" nation was invented in the 1800s, and a significant fraction
of the Italian right now seems determined to uninvent it. In Chicago, in
the early 1900s, there was a prolonged struggle over the national
identity of the people now known as Ukrainian immigrants, with competing
networks of institutions seeking to construct national identities as
Poles, Ruthenians, Little Russians, Russians, and Ukrainians. With the
defeat of the claimants in the diaspora, the Ruthenian nation vanished
without a trace, aside from some old buildings where it was engraved
into the stone. Similarly, there was heated debate within the Polish
community over whether Jews, atheists, socialists, and members of the
Polish National Alliance could be considered members of the Polish
nation. Such debates had little to do with language or culture, rather
they represented efforts by competing leaderships to establish dominance
and to exclude those who subscribed to competing identities from
inclusion in the fold of "the people."
But Staudenmaier's confusion does not end with his definition of
nationalism. Throughout his essay, he treats the concepts of "nation"
and "race" as if they were synonyms. There are, of course, important
similarities between the two concepts: Both lack any basis in the real,
material world, but are instead ideological constructs invented to
justify oppression and domination. Although their boundaries are porous,
subject to constant reinterpretation and redefinition (as are all
arbitrary categorization schemes), many people have internalized these
constructs, making them part of their own self-identification. Both are
poisonous, pernicious ideologies; there is no crime too heinous to be
"justified" under the cloak of race or nation. And, of course, both are
manifested in social arrangements that reflect not only relations of
power (which have their own historic weight), but have also implanted
themselves in the consciousness even of those sincerely committed to the
cause of human emancipation.
But despite these similarities, there are also important distinctions
between race and nation. While no one can define either with any
precision, given their wholly mythic character, race certainly does not
involve questions of geography or language - the only two generally
agreed-upon markers of nationality. (That nation is not in fact defined
in any way by these markers is a different question.)
There are certainly people who have historically been - and continue to
be - oppressed in particular ways, justified in part by alleged
differences in skin color and/or physical build. (Such differences have
relatively little explanatory power; in the 1790s there was a debate in
this country over whether Germans were "white" or "black"; in the 1800s
the same question was raised about the Irish; in the early 1900s Finns
were widely considered an "Asiatic" people by specialists in racial
categorization. Physical characteristics are purely incidental to such
arguments, which are fundamentally about power and domination.) This
history of oppression manifests itself in many ways, from the jobs
workers are able to obtain, to the schools their children are enrolled
in, to the accumulated resources they have at their disposal to see them
through hard times or enable them to secure a viable economic foothold,
to their likelihood of being shot by police. Syndicalists have always
recognized the importance of racial oppression, fighting against
discrimination on the job and in the broader society, demanding equal
access to jobs, and putting our bodies on the line in the struggle for
racial justice. "Race" has been used both to divide the working class
and to subject one segment of our class to particularly brutal
oppression and exploitation, and as such it can not be ignored. But its
manifestation is radically different than that of "nation," and to treat
them as interchangeable is a dangerous confusion.
It is particularly dangerous when Staudenmaier swings between race and
nation, arguing that anarchists should build cross-class alliances - an
anarchist version of the Popular Front which has sucked so many radicals
into pallid reformism. While there is a certain logic to cross-class
alliances for those who seek state power above all else, there is
absolutely no reason why anarchists should be making common cause with
our exploiters. It is not only wrong in principle, it not only feeds
illusions among our fellow workers, but it is tactically stupid to boot.
As we noted earlier this year, "The right of a people to
self-determination is a long-standing anarchist principle. Nationalism,
however, is a fraud whereby would-be rulers `self-determine' to impose
their vision of nationhood on an entire community. Nationalism is an
ideology of separation, of hatred for the 'other.' It is a creed of
violence and war and oppression. And it has absolutely nothing to offer
the world's oppressed. What is necessary is to develop human solidarity,
the instincts of mutual aid that enable us to survive and which have
fueled all human progress..."
Even many Marxists are at long last recognizing the folly of their long
detour into nationalism. In a recent essay, George Kateb describes
nationalism (and its close cousin, patriotism) as "a grave moral error"
arising out of "a state of mental confusion." Noting that the nation is
an amalgam "of a few actual and many imaginary ingredients," he notes
that patriotism, in its essence, "is a readiness to die and to kill for
an abstraction ... for what is largely a figment of the imagination."
(907) Necessarily constructed to exclude the vast majority of humanity
from its imagined community, patriotism - the celebration of the nation
armed-needs external enemies. "Patriotism is on a permanent moral
holiday, and once it is made dynamic, it invariably becomes criminal."
(914) But not only does nationalism define itself in opposition to the
whole of humanity, Kateb argues, it also requires that the individual
surrender her moral authority and individuality, abandoning her own
dignity and individuality to embrace submersion into an ideology of
hatred, a life of criminality. Quoting Thoreau, he concludes that only
those who surrender their "self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to
the less" can be patriotic. "They love the soil which makes their
graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate
their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads."
As Rudolf Rocker noted, "the change of human groups into nations, that
is, State peoples, has not opened out a new outlook... It is today one
of the most dangerous hindrances to social liberation." (202) Peoples
with common history, language and cultural backgrounds evolved over long
periods of living together in free (and sometimes not so free) social
alliances. No anarchist would propose that such communities should be
forced to dissolve themselves into some invented social identity. But
this is precisely what nationalism, the political theology of the state,
attempts. "Nations" are in no sense natural communities; they stand in
stark opposition to human autonomy, to the right of self-organization
and self-determination, and to the principles of mutual aid and
solidarity upon which our very survival depends.
References:
ASR: The Folly of Nationalism, #30 (Winter 2000/01), 1-2.
Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchism, Letters on Patriotism, A
Circular Letter to My Friends in Italy, The Knouto-Germanic Empire and
the Social Revolution. Excerpted in G.P. Maximoff, ed. The Political
Philosophy of Bakunin.
Jon Bekken, Negotiating Class and Ethnicity: The Polish-Language Press
in Chicago. Polish-American Studies (Autumn 2000), 5-29. George Kateb,
Is Patriotism a Mistake? Social Research 67(4) (Winter 2000), 901-24.
Rudolf Rocker, Nationalism and Culture.
Werner Sollors (ed.), The Invention of Ethnicity.
Mike Staudenmaier, What Good are Nations? Arsenal 3 (2001), 11-17. 1573
Milwaukee Ave., PMB 420, Chicago IL 60622