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What is a nation?

John-Paul
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Posted 12/08/07 - 09:47 AM: Subject: What is a nation?	#1
Usually I baulk when I am being shepherded through the airport and I see that signboard coralling "UK-Nationals" (I hold a British passport). What are those things? Am I one of them? Why am I being asked to identify myself in this manner? The signboard somehow appears rude. It might as well bear the legend "UK-Genitals", and I would react in a similar way, vaguely blushing. The whole construction is founded on coincidence. This stiff beaurocratic categorisation can't have meaning, surely, at least not one outside solipsism and chance. I realise that a political entity needs to define its bounds, in terms of human membership and geographical extent but surely these things are subject to permanent change, surely they (must?) flow like Heraclitus' river and can't be held by dams and lock-gates? If there must be this invention "UK-National", why can membership not be a matter of individual choice? A free citizen is one who has freedom of choice - true or false? Clearly this also applies to other such constructs e.g. "French-National" etc., though in the latter case, the matter is weighed down by a degree of official delusion not present in the UK example. Culturally, I am not "British", which a Pakistani-origin Muslim can also be, because there are no bits of me which know what it is to be a Pakistani Muslim. Am I "English"? Do I drink ale? No - lager. Do I understand inches? No - centimetres. Do I think in "English" constructs (which must in different contexts have produced amongst other things the Common Law)? Hm, - probably I would be just as well at home in Swedish Allemansrätt in a matter of days. Is it the language? But that's spoken also in Ireland, of which I am (suddenly) not a "national". I feel we are being hoodwinked. Justified? Edited by John-Paul on 12/26/07 - 05:00 AM. Reason: Précis
"Christianity is not a religion of morals but of therapy" (Eugen Biser) to which I add "... not properly a religion ..."

Caldwell
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Posted 12/08/07 - 03:26 PM:	#2
John-Paul wrote: Why am I being asked to identify myself in this manner? The signboard somehow appears rude. It might as well bear the legend "UK-Genitals", and I would react in a similar way, vaguely blushing. The whole construction is founded on coincidence. This stiff beaurocratic categorisation can't have meaning, surely, at least not one outside solipsism and chance. Go back to Locke's Two Treatises of Government.

moonlight
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Posted 12/09/07 - 05:58 AM:	#3
John-Paul wrote: why can membership not be a matter of individual choice? A free citizen is one who has freedom of choice - true or false? What makes you think it isn't a matter of individual choice? After all, there must be some procedure you could follow to relinquish your UK citizenship. Similarly, others have the opportunity to apply for the citizenship. Cordially, moonlight.
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. - Ambrose Bierce -

John-Paul
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Posted 12/09/07 - 08:34 AM:	#4
Dear Professor Caldwell, John Locke is even now looking over my shoulder and egging me on! His Treatises on Government are theories of state to which I fully subscribe! That is, in as far as they are developed (Locke just said "hrrrmph!"). His first essay is a rebuttal of Sir Robert Filmer's theory of the state as patriarch, the citizens being its children and except for one point we can stay with that since it serves my purpose entirely (the second Treatise fleshes the first out and systematises it). Locke protests to Filmer that any state must base its legitimacy in the rights of the individual and his majority status - quite unaristotelian and of course enlightened. The one point out of the second treatise I would touch on here is Locke's dictum that each man cannot be his own judge (which leads to the wild west), there must be a common basis of law. All this is quite reasonable and unproblematic for any person open to reason. I will choose my state and abide by its laws (and pay its taxes). But things do not work like that. We are not (say, at eighteen, the age of majority) officially given the choice, the choice Locke says I have by right, but we get coralled into some officialese invention known as a "nation-state". This is most certainly NOT what Locke meant by "state", but is a foolish invention of the intervening (in chronological terms) romantics. Nobody asked me which citizenship I wished for, I was bundled into somebody's category of convenience (where was he born? Oh all right then). In other "nation-states" it's even worse, because they draft you into an army for "national service", a remnant of feudalism. Locke's treatises are an excellent starting point, we need to develop them for the coming milennium. @ Moonlight - the choice is ours by right, not one we need to apply for, cowering under the discretions of offical whim
"Christianity is not a religion of morals but of therapy" (Eugen Biser) to which I add "... not properly a religion ..."

moonlight
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Posted 12/09/07 - 07:31 PM:	#5
Hello John, John-Paul wrote: @ Moonlight - the choice is ours by right, not one we need to apply for, cowering under the discretions of offical whim I'm sure you happily filled in your form and clicked OK just like everyone else to join this forum's community. Why then all the fuss about having to fill in a form to join a national community? What I mean to say is that I don't believe in a right to join a nation (or any other community) one wishes to join, without obtaining firstly the consent of at least some its members. A community must welcome new members, otherwise it will cease to exist as such. This consent can take various forms: direct, indirect, by signing a paper, by behaving in a certain way, by paying money, by writing proper English in your messages, etc... It's a fact of life that we like to live in communities. Even Robinson Crusoe was over the moon to have Friday around. We are born in communities, be they families or nations, and we keep joining and leaving communities throughout our lives, be they football fan clubs or discussion forums. And in all cases we seek the acceptance of the members of the community we wish to join. What would the point be otherwise? And one final comment: it's certainly much easier for someone living in the UK to become, feel and live as a British national, then it would be for them to become English, Scottish or Welsh nationals. Even a ton of papers and long application queues are less trouble and burden than the acceptance of the home nations' vox populi. I mean: I don't know many black Scotsmen. Do you? Cordially, moonlight.
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. - Ambrose Bierce -

Caldwell
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Posted 12/09/07 - 11:26 PM:	#6
John-Paul wrote: Dear Professor Caldwell, Oh, please don't. I'm just Caldwell. I'm glad you did look at the treatises. And I like your explanation of his points, because I myself am not critical of them, because I'm not good at criticizing Locke. I hope you also read the small bit on "foreigners", as he says it.

John-Paul
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Posted 12/23/07 - 08:56 AM:	#7
Hello Caldwell, SORRY that I haven't sooner replied to your posting: absolute lack of time to sit down and think the issue through, for it needs thinking through. Can I also say that I have never known someone who says so much with so few words! You very brilliantly sent me to the right parts of Locke with one word. You're like the conductor who with an indiscernible movement of his palm causes silence. OK, so Locke supports my case, I wish to propose, without outlining modes, or maybe rituals, rites of passage, of how to obtain a citizenship. This I meant in my earlier postings with "he (Locke) needs to be developed". But I propose it would be development, not contradiction! The critical chapter is in the 2nd Treatise Ch. VIII, where he discusses the beginnings of political societies (mutatis mutandis transferral of citizenship to a new society), where he issues a more detailed rebuttal of the Filmer theory of the patrician state than in the First Treatise. He asks: John Locke wrote: The other objection I find urged against the beginning of polities, in the way I have mentioned, is this, viz. §113. That all men being born under government, some or other, it is impossible any of them should ever be free, and at liberty to unite together, and begin a new one, or ever be able to erect a lawful government. Objection (by Locke): So how come we have so many legitimate governments? Why is there not just one world-government? Locke argues that the plurality of "commonwealths" rules out the possibility of being bound in fealty to any one. The Roman Catholic church used this logic in reverse in the high middle ages in an attempt to gain (at first temporal, then at least spiritual) sovereignty over all Christian states, and thereby over its subjects (stata theory, Robert Bellarmine). Galloping on, Locke says: John Locke wrote: §119. Every man being, as has been shewed, naturally free, and nothing being able to put him into subjection to any earthly power, but only his own consent; it is to be considered, what shall be understood to be a sufficient declaration of a man's consent, to make him subject to the laws of any government. He goes on to explain that the state's jurisdiction over an individual ends with that man's enjoyment of property. So long as the individual is resident, he must obey the laws of the land. But he can sell up and leave - it is his right. And he can found a new commonwealth or attach himself to an existing one - also his right. Then the nature of that polity will mirror the ideals of the one he was PERMITTED to leave. States which do not permit free movement and choice are not states by Locke's definition, but primeval conditions of existence. I propose that it does not follow (as evidenced by Locke's arguments) that the state has any form of "right" to one's membership. The development is (as said above) that individuals should without asking be given the right of choice at the age of majority. I see this as a natural corollary of the nature of Lockian citizenship. It was the Romantics who reintroduced into our thinking the new version of vassalhood, the nation-state theory. Like all those Neo-Gothick churches which are really travesties, so are the nation-state and the various nationalisms (and of course national-socialism) travesties of true mediaeval vassalhood. The ugliest aberration within this thinking is the continued existence of compulsory military service. Moonlight, just staying with John Locke (and I'm not trying to be a "Lockian" - he just happens to support my case), you make the point he makes (if you care to look: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/locke/john/l81s/chapter8.html ) at § 122, op. cit.: membership of a society. No, I shall never be a Frenchman and yes, a black Scotsman/ Englishman is a difficult challenge, but we need to differentiate between what Locke calls "society" (§122) and what he calls "government". It is in practice an extremely difficult distinction, because the interface is so gradated, but it's there. At the very least we need to turn about the burden of proof: the government of the chosen state needs to be obliged to prove why the individual cannot exercise his/her free choice, the free man needs to prove nothing. With the practicalities you are right: command of the local language and understanding of local custom (custom, not primarily law) are important. But your model of a state (as it currently exists) as a "community" in any realistic meaning of that term (like a club, with membership rules!) cannot work (and doesn't work). Pip pip! Edited by John-Paul on 12/26/07 - 05:11 AM. Reason: clarification
"Christianity is not a religion of morals but of therapy" (Eugen Biser) to which I add "... not properly a religion ..."

johncee1945
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Posted 12/27/07 - 03:35 AM:	#8
The nation was founded on economic considerations of a social system capitalism. This is a system based on each against all that has outlived itself. It is run by a small ruling class and out of weakness they rule by creating endless divisions in society, pitting one section against another. Using the ploy of divide and rule, divide and conquer, divide and steal. In India the British ruled through introducing a dividing line, a promoted difference, an artificial border between Pakistan and India that subsequently cost a million people lives. The same story of creating artificial borders and states in the Middle East. All the trouble in the Middle East is deliberately created and Arab nationalism has been their biggest downfall. The profit system we live under now finds that the old national states, without whose formation it could not have overthrown feudalism, are too cramped for it. In his famous pamphlet The War and the International, published in November 1914, Trotsky wrote: "What the politics of imperialism has demonstrated more than anything else is that the old national state that was created in the revolutions and the wars of 1789-1815, 1848-1859, 1864-1866, and 1870 has outlived itself, and is now an intolerable hindrance to economic development. But above all other considerations, nationalism and racism are tools used to divide and carve up workers.

John-Paul
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Posted 12/27/07 - 02:01 PM: Subject: internationale?	#9
Gosh. How nice (no, really!) to have a real old-fashioned Trotskyist on my thread! I thought you had all died out. Trotsky's problem is that there is no such thing as an international proletariate. Threatened by works closures, the workers of the multinational Airbus corporation scurry off to their different local politicians to be rescued: Those in Toulouse do not go on strike for the survival of those in Hamburg or Bristol. Furthermore (a new point), contemporary national socialism feeds off the resentments of the disadvantaged artisanship (here in Europe) who claim that "foreigners" (whoever they are) take their jobs and steal their customs. There is an admixture of leisured gentlemen supporting them, and these are to be seen as classless, but the resentment arises out of the combustion of essentially proletarian issues. It's also largely contrived, but that's offthread. Also offthread, and alas offbeam, is your resumé of British Imperial history: By the time Pakistan was founded, the Raj was officially counting its days. Your other historical points have a similar tenor. My argument does not claim that the nation state is the official face of exploitative capitalism (though often it may be well be just that) but that it is politologically a monstrous fiction. And a fiction has no right to an individual's membership.
"Christianity is not a religion of morals but of therapy" (Eugen Biser) to which I add "... not properly a religion ..."

johncee1945
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Posted 12/29/07 - 04:10 AM:	#10
John Paul the aspirant "offbeam, is your resumé of British Imperial history". Oh deary me, I thought you mentioned Britain and enquired into What Is a Nation in your brief. As the Brits would say, "thats not very British of you ignoring Britain" after all we did, the oldest capitalist nation; who in their colonial aspirations perfected divisions in society at home and amongst their colonial "possessions". I used the division of Pakistan and India that caused a million deaths to highlight the consequences of carving up the British Empire to rule and plunder. Moreover two years ago Pakistan and India were threatening each other with nuclear missiles. I am not sure what your referring to by "contemporary national socialism". There is no such thing as national socialism. Socialism is internationalism and always has been going back to 1850 with the release of the Communist Manifesto and the battle cry of "workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains." As I explained clearly, capitalism is founded on the nation state. Germany was carved up by the nationalists creating divisions - East and West Germany. This was done principally to divide and carve up the most powerful working class in the world with its long traditions of suporting socialism. Most of all the conditions the German working class won was through the socialists. The Natzi thugs were never voted in nor could they reveal their real agenda and program.The Natzis countered this by calling themselves national socialists.

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