Volume 24 Issue 1 January 2012
Yes, I am a traitor, if you are a patriot, if you are a defender of our homeland,
I am a traitor to my homeland, I am a traitor to my country.
If patriotism is your farms,
if the valuables in your safes and your bank accounts is patriotism,
if patriotism is dying from hunger by the side of the road,
if patriotism is trembling in the cold like a cur and shivering from malaria in the summer,
if sucking our scarlet blood in your factories is patriotism,
if patriotism is the claws of your village lords,
if patriotism is the catechism, if patriotism is the police club …
—Nazım Hikmet Ran, “Traitor”
One of the greatest poets of modern Turkey, Nazım Hikmet Ran, a communist, wrote these powerful verses in 1962 when he was attacked for being a “traitor” by the nationalist establishment of the time. He died in Moscow in exile a year later—a victim, a good part of his adult life, of nationalistic fervor. His story is one of many tragic moments in the very complicated relationship of Marxism with nationalism.
It would be a mistake to think of Marxism and nationalism as eternally rival movements. At times they have been antagonistic, at others, the two have joined forces, and yet, at other times, Marxism has worked in complicity with nationalism. An effective Marxism, a Marxism that desires to rethink, has to start by reflecting seriously on this still potent political force, a potency that is still underestimated and consequently understudied. This in turn, we believe, undermines the potency of Marxism as a political force.
This special issue of Rethinking Marxism, on Marxism and nationalism, has been planned with the hope of starting a series of reflections coming to terms with nations, nationalism, and their relation to capitalism, with a view to exploring the possibilities Marxism can open for political transformation. The authors’ individual takes on nationalism and its relation to Marxism are in part overlapping and in part not, if not contrary to one another. We think, however, that it is this kind of very open discussion with multiple perspectives that is needed for a rejuvenation of Marxism and a furthering of its fortunes.
In his eloquent contribution, “Nationalism Today,” Partha Chatterjee invites us to question the validity of the influential conceptualizations of global polity as a centerless empire with deterritorialized authority. Against those who claim that we no longer live in a world order based on equal sovereign states, rendering nationalism and imperialism deeply problematic concepts, Chatterjee argues that neither nationalism nor imperialism has ceased to exist. In his article, he develops a new conceptual apparatus deemed more appropriate for the new conditions of global political economy, as he believes the classical Marxist theories of imperialism are no longer adequate. A new definition of empire, rather than identifying with the annexation and occupation of territories, needs to explain the modern terms of formal and informal control. Chatterjee argues that against the normative register of the formal equality among nation-states, modern imperial power manifests itself in the form of the “imperial prerogative,” which is the power to “declare the exception,” just as John Stuart Mill declared dependencies such as India and Ireland exceptions to the universal principle of representative government. Such declarations always bring with them pedagogical projects—tasks that the declaring powers “assume”—of the “normalization” of the exception through regimes of violence and/or culture. Imperial prerogative comes into play when a “deviation” from the empirical norm (such as mortality rates, income per capita, poverty rates, democratic progress, and so on) becomes the basis for the suspension of the principle of sovereignty. Currently, Chatterjee argues, the imperial prerogative is shared among a larger group of powers, by which he warns us against the notion of identifying the imperial prerogative with Western, advanced industrial powers. This warning is shared by most of the contributors to this volume, as Chatterjee and others think it is necessary now to both perceive and critically analyze the imperial prerogative, and how it constitutes the projects of economic and political empire well under way in the modern states of China, India, and Turkey. As he says, “empire is immanent in the modern nation.”
Can we envision a capitalist world without nation-states? Neil Davidson's contribution is a passionate response in the negative, taking further Chatterjee's interrogation of modern theories of global empire. Davidson argues emphatically that capitalism in fact requires nation-states. For him, the current state system is a necessary product of competitive accumulation built on the foundation of the exploitation of labor power. For competitive purposes, capitals need to be aggregated on specific territories, the ideological basis of which is provided by nationalism. Nationalism, for Davidson, is the framework through which the collective competitiveness of capitalism is legitimized—that legitimation which finds its highest level of expression at the level of the state. Davidson argues that nationalism not only unifies the fragmented sections of the bourgeoisie, but also plays a central role in fragmenting the working class. What, then, are the sources of support in the working class for nationalism? He responds that, in addition to deliberate attempts by the bourgeoisie at fostering it, most significantly, nationalism functions as the provider of “psychic compensation” for working classes alienated from capitalist society and in search of a collective identity. Davidson's theorization is all the more important in the wake of three decades of neoliberalism, which have led to further polarization between nation-states as well as along class lines within countries. Communities, whose sense of identity is undermined, have latched on to nationalist discourses in attempts at compensation. In such mobilizations, working classes, too, can support a nationalist identity, larger than all, at the expense of internationalist solidarity. The urgency of this realization becomes clearer when taken together with Davidson's argument about the inherently conflictual nature of capitalist order with its inherently destructive capacities: geoeconomic competition ends in geopolitical rivalry, of which war is but one possibility. In this rigorous analysis of the contemporary capitalist state, Davidson points at that stratum which administers the moves: the state managers—those who can, among other things, use “the imperial prerogative.”
Radhika Desai continues the critique of cosmopolitan Marxism with an equally passionate contribution. She builds a case for what she calls the materiality of nations based on a meticulous reading of Marx and Engels's works on free trade and protectionism, with a particular focus on Marx's critique of List and, to a lesser extent, Carey. Desai argues that a careful reading of these works reveals to us Marx's (and Engels's) appreciation of the centrality of the state in the development of capitalism, which was there even when Marx articulated the view that free trade secured the fastest development of capitalism. Marx's critique of List as the economist of the “weak German bourgeoisie,” argues Desai, should be taken as an analog to his critique of German philosophers: what Marx criticized on the topic of religion was criticized as free trade in discussing the work of List. Without a doubt, Marx criticized List for the latter's depiction of capitalism as a harmonious domestic social order that externalizes conflict only in the international arena. According to Marx, List was concerned only with the exploitation of one nation by another and not with class exploitation. Marx writes that what the bourgeois “calls his nationality” is the expression of collective interest directed against the proletariat of his or her own country being directed against the bourgeoisie of another country. Amidst all this relentless critique, Desai tells us, what is revealed is that Marx understood the crucial role the state plays in the development of capitalism, crystallizing the point that imagining capitalism without nation-states is simply incorrect. Her take on the centrality of nation-states resonates with The Great Transformation, the seminal work of Karl Polanyi, where, while discussing the “birth of the liberal creed,” Polanyi argues that the discourse on free trade was articulated when Great Britain established itself as the global hegemon, having harnessed all the resources it could under the protective gaze and support of the state. Desai's contribution is a reminder to us of the continuing relevance of Polanyi's observations, along with those of Marx—all the more so as the neoliberal onslaught, though faltering, continues, casting doubt for many on the existence, relevance, and potency of nation-states.
A shared concern of all the participants in this volume—the possibility of imperial imaginations and practices by non-Western states—is the focus of Dibyesh Anand's article. Taking a critical stance against a number of classical theorizations of Marxism characteristic of the 1970s literature and pointing to the need to comprehend certain forms of nationalism and imperialism conditioned more by political concerns than economic ones, Anand constructs his analysis of the emerging powers of India and China on the basis of the concept of the Postcolonial Informal Empire (PIE). Reminiscent of Chatterjee's normative register for the international context, for Anand the “informality” of postcolonial empires is given by the “theoretical” equality of their citizens. What defines the essence of polity in PIEs is the center-periphery relations producing, through myriad regimes, minoritized borderland ethno-nationalist communities. Anand produces an innovative and rich description of the PIEs. Perceiving themselves as continuations of great empires, PIEs deny charges of imperial acts, as China does vis-à-vis Tibet and the Uighur areas, or claim that they are responsible democracies, as is the case with India. This denial goes hand in hand with practices of representation through which borderland peoples are constructed as minorities, in a spectrum ranging from colorful ethnic communities to potential terrorists working to split the nation. For Anand, the nationalisms that fostered the anticolonial struggles have lost their revolutionary ethos and have become the nurturing source of a civilizational identity, and sustained economic growth and nationalism have become the main mechanisms of control. In drawing out this textured picture of emerging informal empires, Anand articulates the possibility and actuality of colonial and imperial practices within contemporary non-Western countries, a reality that has met the indifference at best, complicity at worst, of many in the Left, including Marxists. Anand's analysis brings into sharper relief the need for the Left, including Marxists, to be more vigilant of the new forms of nationalism, of those celebratory discourses often channeling the discontent of the deprived poor and the déclassé middle classes against “domestic” and “foreign” enemies.
Anand points at the importance of representations of the “other” as part of nationalism and imperialist practices. A very potent such source, without a doubt, is the practice of the writing of history itself. This is the backdrop to the contribution of Ravi Vaitheespara, who produces a carefully considered critical genealogy of Indian scholarship on Tamil nationalism, tracing the changing perspectives and drawing comparisons between Indian postcolonial scholarship and the revolutionary theorists of the twentieth-century anticolonial struggles, such as those of Frantz Fanon. The early, influential Cambridge school theorized Tamil nationalism as the consequence of “elite competition” for a bigger portion of economic rewards—thus, claims Vaitheespara, eschewing the significance of culture. He notes, with interest, that the Marxist analyses of postindependence India were no less critical: having become synonymous with Indian nationalism of the time, they, too, perceived Tamil nationalism as resulting from imperial strategies of “divide and rule.” Vaitheespara argues that, if subaltern approaches enabled the breaking of the elitist orientation of historiography until that time through a focus on the subaltern, albeit not a Gramscian transformative one, it was the growing popularity of postcolonial scholarship that pierced the first critical holes in nationalist historiography by laying bare its deep connections to colonial historiographic traditions. However, the recent “depoliticization” of postcolonial scholarship is a cause for concern for Vaitheespara, who argues that a more effective and political scholarship will have to contextualize analyses in the complex transformations of the broader political economy shaped by class, caste, and gender dimensions, a project that he believes can draw inspiration from liberation theorists like Fanon.
What Vaitheespara sees as the limitation of postcolonial scholarship on nationalism is precisely the core of the article contributed by Anjan Chakrabarti and Anup Dhar. The authors theorize the new form of Indian nationalism in the context of the economic “utopia of inclusive development” and of neoliberal capitalist globalization. Using an overdeterminist Marxist class analysis, they argue that, quite to the contrary of the rhetoric of the new nationalist discourse, the contemporary model of capitalist development is in fact exclusive of the “world of the third,” which resists, in many different ways, the processes of primitive accumulation through alternative “language-logic-experience-ethos” of the world. In other words, the world of the third is the gravel in the ill-fitting shoe of nationalism. In doing this, Chakrabarti and Dhar state that their analysis engages with one particular critique of nationalism; inspired by Marx, Rabindranath Tagore, and Mahatma Gandhi, they consider nationalism a hurdle to alternative forms of organizing human sociality. Inclusive development represents a refashioning of the principles of economic growth with poverty management. The fast and deep integration of India into the capillaries of global capital is conditioned by the promise of inclusivity—the promise that the splendors of this spectacular growth will be shared by all. For Chakrabarti and Dhar, the new trope of inclusive development is fundamental to counteracting the “dispersion” of the Indian economy. As the postindependence project of self-sufficiency based on state-sponsored, import-substituting industrialization gave way to the neoliberal vision, as the social safety net was ripped apart from underneath the society, so grew the need for a new kind of collective identity, an “uncharted Indianness.” According to the authors, contemporary Indian economy is a fantastically complex space: it is constituted by the camp of global capital, the breeding ground of new nationalism; is embraced by the culture of individualism, possession, and fierce competition; and comprises processes directly related to global capitalist enterprises all connected via the local-global markets. The world of the third, on the other hand, is conceptualized as all the noncapitalist class and nonclass processes that currently lie outside the grip of global capital; in the eyes of modernism, it is all that is unproductive, inefficient, containing surplus labor, in need of progressive change, of being “included,” of being transformed into its capitalist other. It is not a unified space; to the contrary, it is marked by innumerable modes of existence, voices and ethos, resilient and defying “inclusion.” For the authors, the multifaceted struggle between capital and the gravel in the shoe, the world of the third, is the basis of the central contradictions of the contemporary Indian state and the desire to resolve some of these through the new nationalist discourse of “inclusive development.”
Vietnam is possibly still the most potent symbol of imperialist violence and anti-imperialist resistance of the mid-twentieth century. Through a series of striking pictures and letters, artists Sherry Millner and Ernie Larsen travel in the country observing, all at once, the signs of its transformation amidst the traces of unspeakable suffering imposed by the war and the continuing efforts of the people in coming to terms with the past. They wonder at the vibrancy of life in the cities, the crowds in public spaces, the curiosity with which people approach them, the energy, poverty, yet lack of any visibility of despair. They reflect on the trauma and the folly of the war; what, unfortunately and fatally, may be slipping from public memory elsewhere as social amnesia takes hold, seems still very much a part of social memory in Vietnam. They travel to My Lai, what is called the Son My Vestige Area, to look in horror at the traces of the Cham towers, magnificent ancient imperial Vietnamese structures, pounded to rubble during the relentless U.S. bombardment. The hamlet physically doesn't exist, but it has a presence: the villagers believe that the ghosts of the 501 people killed during the massacre still roam the area screaming. The memory of horror needs to be kept alive: by adding kitchen implements to the rectangles outlining the burnt-out houses, or by life-sized sculptures of the corpses of dogs, cats, and gutted baby pigs. The ironies of the anti-imperialist struggle are not lost on Millner and Larsen: Ho Chi Minh, “he who seeks to enlighten,” the leader of the anti-imperialist struggle, when declaring Vietnam independent, quoted from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of 1776. He lived and worked in Boston and New York City where he heard and was influenced by Marcus Garvey. His first essay was on lynching. When the young Ho attended the Paris Peace Conference, he asked Woodrow Wilson to sign a declaration supporting Vietnamese independence. Wilson declined, perhaps using his imperial prerogative to declare the “exception.” Modern nationalisms have often produced personality cults around the leaders associated with independence struggles. Ho Ch Minh, it seems, is no exception to this: his body was embalmed against his wishes and is now in a mausoleum, and statues of him rivaled only by Buddha are omnipresent in Vietnam. One is left wondering, then, even in the case of nationalisms born out of postimperialist/postcolonial struggles, in light of such adulation, about how history will continue to be written and remembered. Even in young nations such as Vietnam, the allure of “enterprise” sometimes can weigh heavily: Namo Beach, where the first marines were deployed, is now the site of construction for luxury hotels. Vietnam is now the second largest exporter of coffee and rice in the world. Are these signs of Vietnam being sucked into the capillaries of global capital? Are the smugglers Millner and Larsen see, the vibrant gray economy, Vietnam's world of the third, going to be the next targets of global capital? Will they resist?
In the final contribution to this volume, John Schwarzmantel gives a detailed assessment of the Marxist literature on nationalism, arguing that the profound transformations taking place in the era of globalization and the emergence of new forms of nationalism have underlined the inadequacy of classical Marxist perspectives on nationalism. Schwarzmantel suggests a rethinking around the themes of the fruitfulness of Marxism in understanding contemporary reality, against the memory of difficulty that Marxist as well as Marxist-inspired theories have had in coming to terms with nationalism and the forms of internationalism or supranational forms of solidarity. Classical Marxist analyses on nationalism were formulated at a time when organized working-class movements were truly mass movements affecting large sections of society. The complication of this situation was brought about by the fact that, although the working classes aspired to international presence, they all developed within the context of their own nation-states. So, argues Schwarzmantel, the question of Marxism and nationalism was posed in “practical terms,” given the twofold agenda of the working-class movements of gaining power in their respective nations as well as developing links with other movements internationally. However, these were formulations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We now live, says Schwarzmantel, in a world where capitalism has taken a more aggressive neoliberal form; working classes, though still present, are more fragmented and less hegemonic, and a state that previously was more capable of controlling capitalism is now less so. He reviews the varied forms of nationalism. The “nationalism of the Left” developed around the ideas of popular sovereignty and mass democracy supporting self-determination. The idea of nation here entailed a shared history and common political rights. The “nationalism of the Right,” on the other hand, was organized around the idea of national particularity, defined always in opposition to an “Other” defined as the immigrant, the Jew, the foreign worker. Schwarzmantel argues that both forms currently exist. Xenophobic nationalism, perhaps the more prevalent one, provides an outlet for the discontent of those whose existence has become more precarious under globalization. The author also notes a different kind of nationalism, of a heterogeneous kind, more specific to the countries of the global South, organized around notions of self-determination and identity. A revived Marxism, for the author, is one that has to come to terms with the different types of nationalism and knowledge that demands for recognition and solidarity are often expressed through nationalism, sometimes in aggressive forms and at the expense of an Other. It is also one that relates such political movements to the deep transformations within the global political economy, uprooting communities and nurturing an environment of insecurity and fear. A new Marxism has to look for new forms of internationalism, not necessarily in its nineteenth-century form of working-class solidarity but in forms of transnational activism on different bases enhanced by the possibilities of the network society.
As every participant in this volume attests, Marxism of the twenty-first century needs to engage with nationalism. The first condition of this engagement, however, is an acknowledgment of its continued appeal. Capitalism in the past three decades intensified already existing polarizations on national and global scales. Certain variants of nationalism need to be understood in this context, without being reduced to it, of deepening class, gender, and ethnic divides. Marxists also need to pay attention to the demands for national sovereignty coming from communities with long histories of oppression. Such sensitivity, however, should not come at the expense of the realization that all nations and nationalisms have the potential for, and perhaps are the realization of, a certain form of “collective narcissism” with which Marxism, too, whether through indifference or active support, has occasionally been complicit. Marxist movements still work with national agendas, but, as they are engaging on the national home front, they could continue their search for “homes” elsewhere across the globe, continuing, perhaps in altered form, their tradition of internationalism. The great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, at the end of the nineteenth century, expressed exquisitely what we can perhaps call the double bind of nations. We end with his words.
The last sun of the century sets amidst the blood-red clouds of the West and the whirlwind of hatred.
The naked passion of the self-love of Nations, in its drunken delirium of greed, is dancing to the clash of steel and howling verses of vengeance.
The hungry self of the Nation shall burst in a violence of fury from its shameless feeding. For it has made the world its food. And licking it, crunching it and swallowing it in big morsels,
It swells and swells
Till in the midst of its unholy feast descends the sudden shaft of heaven piercing its heart of grossness.
— Rabindranath Tagore, “The Sunset of the Century”
—The Editors |
