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Can you have socialism/communism without nationhood?
Should there be an international revolutionary movement or should we focus on our own 'one nation'? Or does patriotism and nationhood have the potential to capture the essence of the collective spirit, providing the glue which binds together the proletariat, making it instrumental in promoting a more selfless society? Perhaps successful revolutions could in turn lead to a domino effect?
The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got.
The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man – hence, with the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence, relations which cannot be better described than by the cry of a Frenchman when it was planned to introduce a tax on dogs: Poor dogs! They want to treat you as human beings!
- Karl Marx, Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Besides, socialism isn't about essences of collective spirit and selflessness, but workers' control of the means of production.
Many of them would disagree with you, don't you think its wrong for middle class intellectuals to dictate to concepts of culture and nationhood vastly contrary to their (working class men+ WOMEN) view. For example look at Labour's open door immigration policy which lowered the wages of workers in Britain and was an act of cultural vandalism which brought division to working class communities at the profit of the elite.
Without the collective spirit how do you expect collective ownership to come about? The collective spirit is essential;
Yes, I do. That is exactly what happened in the 19th century. Bourgeois intellectuals constructed a national identity from a fabricated history and various folk practices.
The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man – hence, with the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence, relations which cannot be better described than by the cry of a Frenchman when it was planned to introduce a tax on dogs: Poor dogs! They want to treat you as human beings!
- Karl Marx, Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
This is a lie, the concept of collective identity has always persisted throughout human history.
Various collective identities, yes. The concept of a collective national identity, however, is a modern invention.
"What is necessary is to go beyond any false opposition of programme versus spontaneity. Communism is both the self-activity of the proletariat and the rigorous theoretical critique that expresses and anticipates it."
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"...Stalinism is eternally condemned to govern capital, and the ideological dynamics of Stalinism are tied to this peculiar type of capital management; it is locked within this framework, reproducing the logic of capitalism under the veil of communism. For this reason, Stalinism, and its various derivatives, cannot accurately be regarded as communist if we choose to define it in materialist terms." - Tim Cornelis
Is the Roman empire modern to you?
Collective identity =/= national identity. I've read Medieval sources where a villager in Leicestershire calls someone from the same county a foreigner. There was no sense of a common English identity until industrial capitalism.
The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man – hence, with the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence, relations which cannot be better described than by the cry of a Frenchman when it was planned to introduce a tax on dogs: Poor dogs! They want to treat you as human beings!
- Karl Marx, Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
You've moved the goalposts now, firstly I was not referring to any nation in particular, secondly you have admitted that nationhood pre-dates the 19th century by failing to respond to my point about Rome. Furthermore, one or two sources is no basis upon which to draw historical conclusions. Your point also brings me onto another point, that as the world has become more interconnected, and collective identity whether that be national identity or merely 'county identity' as you have brought up here, has begun to fade, in almost direct accordance with the growing level of exploitation of labour by capital due to globalization. The truth of the matter is that collective identity is essential in mobilizing people... as a collective, people need a reason which strikes fire into their hearts and a lion's roar into their voice, if capitalism is to be confronted it must be confronted by the collective.
Did the romans have a collective national (with emphasis on national) identity in the modern sense? I don't think so. As far as I understand, what was required to be a roman was that you were a free wo/man (to the extent the first could really be free), regardless of ethnic origin, mother tongue and whatever criteria we find to be decisive in national identity today.
The concept of the modern nation - sovereignty, national/ethnic unity, standardised language, common state apparatus, the idea of the nation as the people - all of this was born out of the enlightenment and the French revolution and the unification of Italy and Germany. It's undeniably linked to modernity, the growth of capitalism and bourgeois society and so on.
"What is necessary is to go beyond any false opposition of programme versus spontaneity. Communism is both the self-activity of the proletariat and the rigorous theoretical critique that expresses and anticipates it."
-----
"...Stalinism is eternally condemned to govern capital, and the ideological dynamics of Stalinism are tied to this peculiar type of capital management; it is locked within this framework, reproducing the logic of capitalism under the veil of communism. For this reason, Stalinism, and its various derivatives, cannot accurately be regarded as communist if we choose to define it in materialist terms." - Tim Cornelis
Yes the Romans certainly did have a sense of collective, national identity. National identity is not to do with ethnic origin lets make this clear, nor is it to do with mother tongue, it is not about where you come from but your willingness to conform to the collective identity, essentially adopting cultural norms, such as language.
Back on to the Romans, many would run into battle shouting allegiance to the Rome, the story of Rome was well known throughout roman society and it persists to Modern Day Rome itself, for example the football club 'Roma' features a wolf on it's badge, a hark back to story of the foundation of the Roman nation.
--- I've got a female friend coming over *licks lips* -- will respond tomorrow
There are differing conceptions of nationalism even today. This is just one of them, usually linked to the patriotic nationalism of the french revolution.
So your point is that roman nationalism existed because modern italians use roman symbols to show their nationalism? Can't you see that this is exactly an invented tradition? They're using signs of past glory to further Italian nationalism, which has nothing to do with ancient Rome (except these invented traditions trying to make it seem so).
"What is necessary is to go beyond any false opposition of programme versus spontaneity. Communism is both the self-activity of the proletariat and the rigorous theoretical critique that expresses and anticipates it."
-----
"...Stalinism is eternally condemned to govern capital, and the ideological dynamics of Stalinism are tied to this peculiar type of capital management; it is locked within this framework, reproducing the logic of capitalism under the veil of communism. For this reason, Stalinism, and its various derivatives, cannot accurately be regarded as communist if we choose to define it in materialist terms." - Tim Cornelis
Isn't this what you're doing ???
No, that simply isn't possible because capitalism is a global system and each nation-state is a part of that framework. Of course that doesn't mean the revolution has to happen everywhere, at the exact same time, and that workers can't or shouldn't organize in their own countries -- just that socialism in one country is not possible.
I'm on some sickle-hammer shit
Collective Bruce Banner shit
FKA: #FF0000, AKA Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath
The national is also international The workers of all countries face the same crisis, to varying degrees: finance capital is seeking to destroy national independence in order to allow it to sack the wealth of all nations. That’s the globalisation agenda, and that’s where the World Trade Organization fits in.
The only way to deal with the globalisation offensive is nationally: defeat it where we are strong, and widen liberated areas. We can do this through asserting the importance of nation and of independence. The only way we can help other workers is by defeating capitalism here, just as the only true help they can give us is by taking up their own fights. That’s true international solidarity– and it’s the only one that works.
In 1881, just two years before his death, the ailing Karl Marx received a letter from a young socialist, Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, asking for his opinion about the call to rebuild the International Workingmen’s Association, the most advanced experiment in Left Unity up to that date -
A no frills response!
“It is my conviction that the critical juncture for a new International Workingmen’s Association has not yet arrived and for this reason I regard all workers’ congresses, particularly socialist congresses, in so far as they are not related to the immediate given conditions in this or that particular nation, as not merely useless but harmful. They will always fade away in innumerable stale generalised banalities.” When not explicitly tied to the concrete struggles of a real historical conjuncture, the question of Left Unity can be nothing other than the “statement of a phantom problem to which the only answer can be – the criticism of the question itself.”
Night has one thousand eyes
Communists expect social (not simply "collective"; cooperatives are owned collectively and privately) ownership to come about due to the conscious action of the working class. Workers are bound to the class due to their social position, not due to some kind of "spirit", whatever that is!
It is probably wrong to consider the Roman empire - a patchwork of the city-state of Rome, directly-controlled Italian territories, garrisoned provinces ruled mostly by client kings, and the personal property of the Roman state (Pergamon) or the emperor (Egypt) a state, let alone a nation. Even legal norms were different for different ethnicities within the empire - for roman colonists, Greeks and Egyptians in Egypt, for example. There was no universal "Roman identity", except within the city of Rome and among Roman citizens, who were associated with the city even if they were not physical residents (landowners in Campania, for example).Originally Posted by Schumpeter
