← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · triskelion
Thread ID: 8608 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2003-07-31
2003-07-31 02:52 | User Profile
I am greatful to Madrid Burns for translating this article. I feel it raises several good points and certainly represents a trend within pan European thinking. Certainly some of what it is said is difficult to form an opinion of without some clearification from the authors and some aspects of the thoughts expressed I differ with dramatically. Nontheless it is to my mind a good read and worth some serious thought.
National Revolutionary text about the concept of Nation and Europe, from www.nuevorden.net
THE NATIONS AGAINST EUROPE
Note to the american readers: the liberal word here it refers to the classic liberalism or libertarianism
Nation and nationalism If we want to know the meaning of the term 'nation' in the Iberian world and we decide to consult the D.R.A.E.L. (the Dictionary of the Real Spanish Academy of the Language) we will find that this word in the editions previous to 1884 it is defined in the following way: "nation is the collection of the inhabitants of some county, country or Kingdom." As we see in this description it only defines to a territory and its inhabitants, it is based, then, more in the physical than in the political. But in the edition of 1884 the nation appears defined as "a state or political body that it recognizes a common supreme center of government" and "the territories and individuals that are part of it, taken collectively as a group"; a group of inhabitants governed by the same government. These definitions adapt perfectly to the liberal concept of civic nation from the 19 Century, that is to say, here it will be defined as a nation the territorial space whose organization depends on a central power and that the liberals tied it to the population's will. In the edition of 1925 the word nation is again redefined as "a group of people from an ethnic origin and that it generally speak the same language and it has a common tradition." It is presented here, then, the second great definition of the nation. As we have seen the first one is the political or civic nation, and the second would be the ethnic or cultural nation. According to this theory exist a series of objective causes that it define to the groups of people as belonging to a national or other community, with independence from its conscience of it or from its will. This vision of the nation is in the origin of the current nationalisms and of the doctrines linked to the national self-determination claims that it appeared after the First World War, when Wilson proposes in his Plan of Peace for Europe the division of continent in 'objective' nations, (ethnic and linguistic) cultural nations and to endow to these new nations of its own state. According to him, when coinciding the state and the nation the border conflicts and the independentists movements would be avoided, and with that the peace of Europe would be assured. The new division 'objective' of Europe it led to the creation of political spaces so arbitrary as those of the previous political division and, as all we know, the wilsonian peace it only lasted twenty years. The current studies of the nationalisms have made an effort to maintain separate the two fundamental concepts of nation to that we have mentioned. The academics seek with it to present on one hand a 'good' nationalism, this is, that of the national-states already constituted and that they associate with the democracy and the popular will and, on the other hand, the cultural or ethnic nationalism that can be dangerous, and even if it is exacerbated, as our politicians say now, it will be suspicious of racism, xenophobia and incitement to the violence. We don't see separately to these two kinds of nationalism, but that we see them as two stages of the same process. That is to say, when a political center is able to unify a territory that it contains a population with certain cultural unification, a civic nation it has created on the basis of the cultural nation, and with that it will constitute a permanent and definitive Nation-State. All the related with the life of that State will be called 'national'. Its nationalism will be therefore non 'aggressive' because it has simply been limited already to defend the constituted nation. This defense is carried out by the politicians, officials, military and managers that form the elites of this nation and that it will be translated mainly in the creation of a widespread, public and unified educational system, with an education based on a common language (the which is usually that of the group author of the national unit) to provide the necessary ideological and social unit to transform the individuals into citizens of the national community and in obedient beings of the national laws (in the past this function was carried out by the religion). Then, when in spite of this equalizer process the State fails in the integration of other ethnies and cultures (which will always exist then depending on its definition we will always be able to have ethnies of more or smaller extension; and we can enlarge the cultural differences among Europeans or to reduce them to our will) the recoveries of groups or peripheral ethnic or cultural communities from the national states arise and this is what some authors denominate 'excluding nationalism.' That is to say, when an elite from the peripheral ethnic group wants to make with its 'nation' the same thing that made the elite that gave origin to the Central-State, it is attacked by the power of the Central-State and then front to this opposition from the Central-State to the realization of the ethnic-cultural nation (that if it is able to create a State then it would become a political nation or National State), the customs, language and history of the peripheral group politize themselves and they become fight tools against the oppressors, neighbors or autochthonous elites linked with the central power. This fight of the ethnic nationalism made a process of upward social mobility among the professional sectors that would become its future politicians, officials, military and managers that they will become the representatives of the new nation. These separation processes and creation of new nations could continue from this way 'ad infinitum' and all the current European National-States are exposed to it. That we know only exists a National-State in Europe without ethnic-cultural tensions, that is to say in that the ethnic and the politic community coincide, this it is Portugal, excluding the archipelagos, of course. As evidence of this we can mention the fact that the UN has passed from 159 members in 1990 at the current 185 members. In only 5 years 26 new nations have been created, with what we see that, in what concerns to the reproduction of nations, there is not any crisis of natality. The nation was in its moment an important political innovation when overcoming the previous tribal or feudal organizations, that it allowed to made collective tasks that had not been possible to carry out from the division in clans; but we believe that at the present time the existence of National-State is an impediment for the organization of political communities that it can confront with success the main political problem of our time: the destruction of the capitalism and the substitution of this by a Work State that would be translated in the European Worker's Republic. And we say this because we believe that our political project is only possible from a wide territorial frame that coincides with the European frame of Civilization whose essence for us is based on the free exam of the problems, what is translated in a scientific attitude in the life. And an 'scientific' survey of the current politics it led us to see that the nations are consequences of the capitalist project, which we will describe below.
The National-State In the first place, we say that the nations are not natural entities, but recent historical constructions related to the capitalist way of life. The Nation is an attaché of individuals that it organizes the industrial production of goods through a model of territorial State. Heterogeneous populations were included under the prevalence of the language and the cultural characteristics of the bourgeoisie. With this it was tried to create a frame of political unification adapted for the invigoration of a national market. The characteristics of this frame would be:
The differentiation process inside the national environment accompanies another process of integration of the different states as a consequence of the wars. So in 1500 near 500 states existed in Europe, in 1900 the figure had lowered up to 25 states (adaptation of the States to the necessary size of market that allowed to obtain an economy of great scale).
Process of differentiation of the political system that supposes the consecration of the autonomy of the administrative structure, that led in the theoretical plane to the necessity of being founded on new ideological bases the organization of the political life whose payees are the social movements that crystallize themselves in the national bourgeois revolutions and its state form: Liberal state or National State.
The arise of a primordial actor that makes the mediation between both poles of the process: the State, its administrative organization and the Nation, its symbolic ordination. We refer, of course, to the armies. The army is the creator and, at the same time, the most genuine creation of the Nation-State (we refer to the army formed by professionals or mercenaries). The features of the capitalism are necessary conditions for the gradual professionalization of the permanent army. Without the Army-State you cannot achieve the delimitation of the markets, the marine and terrestrial extension and the national frontiers. This connection places to the National-State as a dependent variable of the economic and social forces; and to the Army as a independent variable regarding to them, although they depend formally on the State powers. To solve this contradiction an army of civil officials it is made in a parallel form with regard to the national armies, the civil administration becomes the result of stealing attributions from the military, who on the other hand they introduce it and they impose it in the territory (police's bosses or civil governors were constituted stealing attributions to the viceroys and military governors from the old régime). The pattern of unitary and centralist State is linked with the arise of the permanent army. The organizational rationality of the armies is territorial, since its function is the occupation and defense of a certain geographical environment. With the result that unit and nation are related concepts to the armed forces that would have national vocation for reasons of organizational logistics. Starting from the previous pattern, the project of all nation is to become an important pole of production of industrial goods. It is in this economic camp where it hopes to prevail over the rest of the nations. The bourgeois ideal is, then, a world society of nations, politically sovereign, independent, overturned to the production, the distribution and to the massive consumption of goods, process in which each nation wants to exercise the supremacy.
European Worker's Republic We believe that it has arrived the moment to advancing toward radically different ways of life from the national society, the which had as a essential goal the installation of the communitarian principle. We aspire to a new holist civilization that understands Europe as a communitarian reality, overthrowing the current dominant individualistic ethics. When we speak of holism and community we designate an opposed principle of life to that of the current society.We want to implant a way of life that is affirmed as chore after collective historical goals and not as a simple daily coexistence with particular and mercantile purposes. As a political group will's and not as a simple place of coincidence of separate private activities. We want a new Europe that understood herself in community terms she appears as a superior entity to which all her members and all the branches of activities and zonal structures should integrate. We will go toward a community seated on the basis of adhesion to a post-capitalist project emanated from a radical rationality that it will include the formidable contribution of the old European world. To achieve this our minimum proposals for the creation of this Europe as a political community they would be: . A unique, popular and political army. . A unique law. . A unique currency. . A unique educational system, of justice and of public order. . A unified system of communications. . A single general planning. The substitution of the National State would be made from above with a elimination of its perogatives in favor to the European State and to down through a deep regionalization process and a functional decentralization. Anyway, we think that the road toward the European State doesn't imply the destruction of the Spanish State or any other current National-State, but the establishment of the bases of a movement oriented toward the central occupation and unification of these states. Now, in the same way we believe that the hypothesis of a rupture of the territorial integrity of the Spanish State could not even justify a defense position of it, and its support. The Spanish National-State is not our State, and the resulting states of its division neither would be our state, but rather they would only serve like a new administrative reference on which we will develop our political fight. The European unity would be based on the intrinsic force of the identification with a common project and in a system of grateful authorities on a functional basis.