Nations

[Redhead]

What will happen to nations under communism? Will all borders cease to exist, or will there still be a kind of cultural country.

[Wonton Carter]

Borders will cease, but i imagine each place will have its own little culture, although I imagine many at that point will be minor differences.

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

borders will cease to exist and obv the 'nation state' will have been completely abolished - but communism doesn't mean the homogenisation of culture, a 'communism' that does is one I want absolutely no part in.

[Sinister Intents]

borders will cease to exist and obv the 'nation state' will have been completely abolished - but communism doesn't mean the homogenisation of culture, a 'communism' that does is one I want absolutely no part in.

Absolutely this.^

A communist state is an oxymoron, statism and culture have nothing to do with each other, though a state, an organ of class rule can and does manipulate culture of specific areas as well as destroy culture where needed. A nation will not exist at all when socialism exists because socialism will unite the world in a way that capitalism never can

[exeexe]

A nation is like a religion. They are created in the mind and therefore can not be eliminated completely. They can only be eliminated inside your own head if you dont believe in it.
Maybe we will stop teaching children about such things as a nation and so after 100 years the idea of a nation might have died out.

[Sinister Intents]

A nation is like a religion. They are created in the mind and therefore can not be eliminated completely. They can only be eliminated inside your own head if you dont believe in it.
Maybe we will stop teaching children about such things as a nation and so after 100 years the idea of a nation might have died out.

Nationalism is like a religion and worship of the state takes place in patriotic displays. The human animal literally exclaiming how much it loves it's cage. This hits children in a way where their early development is quite affected by the church and the state. The church and the state both churn out propaganda and lies to get people to believe in them and to see them as normal aspects of life, to get people to accept it as human nature. Children internalize these and see them as normal and thus these children can become quite patriotic in the sense that gender norms get created and they get internalized. Little boys wanting to become a part of the military and seeing it as something potential fun and natural, for them they're incapable of contemplating the purpose the state and church function for. Get them while they're young and you may have them for life. Schools and the family tend to justify these things and a vicious cycle gets created where children see the normality of the current social norms, they've internalized them and they cannot look passed them. A lie told enough times becomes the truth essentially. To eliminate these lies would require us to immediately eliminate the situations which create and perpetuate these things. A transition will be necessary for people to be educated and properly agitated against these harmful views which include nationalism and patriotism. People will need to be taught and schools will need to teach at a young age reality, and to not teach lies to justify the suffering.

[exeexe]

People will still have to be told about history. Just as today when we talk about the dark middle ages so in the future we will talk about the nationalist capitalist age.

In such usage nationalism will get a negative connotation.

[helot]

but communism doesn't mean the homogenisation of culture, a 'communism' that does is one I want absolutely no part in.

This is ofc true.


Interestingly the violent suppression of languages and cultures has been an integral part of nation-formation.

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

People will still have to be told about history. Just as today when we talk about the dark middle ages so in the future we will talk about the nationalist capitalist age.


I should hope not, the popular view of the middle ages (or 'dark ages' if you want to make a fool of yourself) and the way people are generally taught about the period is almost so wrong it's funny. Our perception of the middle ages (i.e around the 5th to the 15th century) is heavily coloured by the prejudices of renaissance scholars (who named it the 'middle ages' in the first place) and their successors over the next four centuries. Its all based in a fetishism for classical empires and classical thought (particularly roman and greek - non-Europeans need not apply) which was used in justifications of modern-day empires. See also the systematic white-washing of history.

[exeexe]

Of-course it was a dark age. The Christian catholic church had the power/monopoly over knowledge and twisted science so that science would fit into the teaching of the church.
Also you had to learn latin to get knowledge? Why? To keep the masses away from knowledge so only the privileged would get knowledge. Therefore it was a dark age because people were kept in the dark.

You know, there is a reason there is something called the age of enlightenment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

Now dont make a fool out of yourself

[Sinister Intents]

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/kropotkin/mutaidch5.html
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/kropotkin/mutaidch6.html

I felt Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, specifically chapters 5 and 6 fit well for how this thread delineated.

They're on mutual aid in medieval cities. Also Exeexe RC's argument still stands. The church and monarchies at the time were crushing cities free of statist and church rule.

[exeexe]

In addition, it was advantageous for the ruler class and the clergy to keep the serfs away from education institutes so that they may successfully rule over them. The fees for education which was required by the Church, monasteries and cathedral schools were often too high for a common serf to pay for.
The whole education system was designed to keep serfs and peasants uneducated; indeed, education during that time was very elitist. Study books were very rare and they were highly expensive and hence, the only way to get education was to seek a teacher.
Boys of upper class used to learn how to read and write Latin which was the official language of the medieval ages. Schools were run by monks. Bishops were also engaged in education system as they used to run and manage cathedral schools. Some of the cathedrals attained great fame and became centers of higher education and established themselves as universities.
,
http://www.thefinertimes.com/Middle-Ages/education-in-the-middle-ages.html

Such was the educational system before the enlightenment.

[Jolly Red Giant]

borders will cease to exist and obv the 'nation state' will have been completely abolished - but communism doesn't mean the homogenisation of culture, a 'communism' that does is one I want absolutely no part in.
Not only that - but communism would / should actively encourage cultural diversity.

Example in point - The Irish language was spoken as a everyday langugage by 80% of the 8 million in Ireland up to the famine in 1850. In the recent census in the South of Ireland - out of 4 million people, just over 77,000 said they speak Irish on a daily basis (outside of school). The cultural nationalists in Ireland have been trying to ram Irish down people's throats for the past 95 years since independence - they have failed utterly. The education system at primary level focusses on two subjects over all the others - Irish and religion - and the system has seen a rapid decline of spoken Irish and religious involvement.

The reality is that capitalism is incapable of fostering a desire among the vast majority of the population to learn (and more importantly, use) Irish as an everyday language. The ruling elites are incapable of doing this because of the monopolisation of culture by the interests of the market. They pay a lip-service to the idea of Irish culture and only pay any interest in it when they can make a quick buck (i.e. Riverdance). On top of that we have cultural nationalists who behave like tin-pot dictators when it comes to trying to impose and force Irish language and culture on young people (many of them primary school teachers and secondary school teachers who teach Irish). Their antics drive the youth away from all things cultural in an Irish context.

In contrast - communism would/should foster a cultural diversity - a desire to learn not just Irish culture but the culture of the planet. The first step is to engender a love of culture as part of the process of education and self discovery. The next step is to fundementally alter the education system from a production line for capitalist automatons to a system that nurtures and develops the talents of the individual and promotes the growing of a rounded individual. This would then be extended into the rest of society.

Capitalism wants and needs a global monocultural society that it can exploit for financial gain - as long as that persists cultural diversity is a misnomer.

As an aside - I was reading recently about the emergence of the modern Olympic Games and for the first few games athletes competed on an individual basis not as country representatives and team sports involved multi-national teams. It wasn't until (I think) the 1908 Olympics in London - probably because of a desire by British Imperialism to prove its superiority - that competitors were nominated on a national basis. In 1908 Irish-born athletes won more gold medals than any other nationality - yet none of them competed for Ireland - they represented either Britain (because of colonialism) or the USA (because of emigration).

[Ritzy Cat]

The "nation-state" is a surrogate for bourgeois nationalism. It is incompatible with communism.

Geographical locations and names should remain the same, for sake of reference. However, with the abolishment of nations does not necessarily mean the abolishment of individual culture. Most of the modern world's national borders are unnatural, notably Africa's. All of Africa's nation's borders are how they are because of European imperialism throughout the last few centuries. If they had been allowed to develop on their own, they would have gone through the same 'nation-forging' that Europeans did throughout the middle ages/Renaissance. This is just another reason why nations should be abolished - nationalism is a bourgeois tool to give people a reason to fight, without having to expend any resources on their own except nationalistic propaganda.

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

Of-course it was a dark age. The Christian catholic church had the power/monopoly over knowledge and twisted science so that science would fit into the teaching of the church.
Also you had to learn latin to get knowledge? Why? To keep the masses away from knowledge so only the privileged would get knowledge. Therefore it was a dark age because people were kept in the dark.

You know, there is a reason there is something called the age of enlightenment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

Now dont make a fool out of yourself

this is precisely the popular view most people reflexively spout and it gives an incorrect and biased account of the medieval period that almost solely focuses on Western and Mediterranean Europe. The term 'dark age' is an affront to the amount of art and literature produced during the middle ages and I'm certainly not alone in the historical community when I say that I think we should stop using it.

And please, don't try to patronise me. Unlike you, I'm not pulling this up from a cursory reading of a wiki article, I'm a fucking history graduate.

[Wht.Rex]

What will happen to nations under communism? Will all borders cease to exist, or will there still be a kind of cultural country.

Theoretically speaking, yes, borders should cease to exists and cultures too, will be some main language that everyone would peak, considering that English and Chinese are most popular, they would become main languages to communicate with each other. Materialism would become culture, it would be "realism", there would no be specific cultural architecture styles or clothing, all would wear similar clothing (like in old futuristic movies), people with high scientifical understanding such as in communism would not care about cosmetics.
In reality, I believe in communism, all borders will cease to exist, but there will be imaginary borders, because many people are simply much more different than others. In my opinion in far future, if communism will be archived, all people would have slight differences because of their past cultures. As many people ideolized in Soviet Union, robots will do all hard labour, while people would engage on scientific stuff, to improve technologies etc. Most likely people society would become technocratic-democracy.