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Nations-states in the global capitalism [The following remarks answer to a text on the imperialism by
Raoul, within International Discussion Network.]
1) In the discussion about the current role of
“the Nation-state”, Raoul rightly calls back, that the number of States
multiplied since 1945. I have approached this question in a text about
Brittany question [in French, sorry] in a way which now seems to me
insufficient. Decolonisation, then explosion of USSR, brought the creation of
a considerable number of new States. On the contrary, there are some fusions,
either by 'reunification' (Germany, Yemen), or by constitution of blocks more
or less unified on a federal mode (European Community, Alena, Mercosur,
etc.), or by abandon of classic characters of sovereignty, with the
disappearance of national currencies (Euroland, Ecuador), indexation on
Dollar (Ecuador, Cuba) or its quasi-exclusive use in the economy (zone mark
and dollar area in the ex-Eastern countries, dollar in Israel). The CFA zone
(west-Africa money based on French Franc) gave a preview since a long time. The limitation of currencies number, nevertheless
attribute of the sovereign power (the English refusal to abandon £…), is
directly boundto its real nature: commodity - not only as general equivalent,
but as separate commodity, that can be sold). From this point of view, States
are producers of currency ; but when its stop being profitable, this
production is abandoned. So there is a process of monetary concentration,
which globally follows the classic laws of the accumulation and the
concentration of the capital. The situation of States is the same : there is
a process of concentration of capital. It does not mean that States are
condemned to disappear all, no more than big transnational companies
eliminated small national ones. On the contrary, the State which take importance has interest to limit others,
to get them rid of the competition. This process of concentration is
certainly not new (unification of Italy, Germany, China, etc.), no more than
the practice of dismantling empires (anticolonialism of the USA towards the
European empires). Both phenomena (fusion of States / fragmentation of
States) seem so bound. The State accumulation of capital can be made on two
non-exclusive modes, as it extends territorially to increase its fiscal sat,
or that it favours the internal economic development to increase the fiscal
mass. First solution has an objective limit, because the earth is a closed
space, so extension could only take place the land controlled by others
States. That is why both solutions are generally combined, and the militarily
weak States have only the second solution. It asks again the question of the interest to study
the State by observing the origin of its incomes. The difficulty, it is that
in the “Marxist tradition”, the State is analysed under the almost exclusive
angle of its functions (repression, ideology, etc.) ; what is
paradoxical, because uncle Marx has never analysed the company according to
his functions (he chooses the example of the textile industry by
convenience, but spits desperately at
what produce companies) ; what he tries to understand is : where comes the
capital from, how it forms and accumulates. If it could reassure the
fan-club, Marx had planned to study the fiscal incomes in the volume of the
capital dedicated to the State, never drafted (cf. Rubel, Marx critic
of Marxism, pp. 439-483, in French). 2) The
notion of “Nation-state” even is debatable. There is about no State which
is really "national" , in the common sense of the term.
Secessionisms, regionalisms, "ethnic" demands exist about
everywhere ; they establish a permanent tendency to the fragmentation.
The logic of the nation-state was
pushed to the absolute, it is the monethnism, the ethnic purification,
because there is no territory with "homogeneous" population. The nation is an establishing myth. It does not
pre-exist to the State, under the shape of a cultural or linguistic reality -
this one is very too vague, too permeable. For the 19th century, folklorists,
philologists, historians, archaeologists made every effort not to extract,
but to establish the materials of a national "identity". They
compiled Kalevala, unified the Serbian-Croatian, writes the socialist history
of the French revolution, searched Alesia [place where Celts where defeated
by Romans]. Today, African museums celebrate the national virtues and
countries on the rectilinear borders, invent a common nationality, celebrate
pride to be Nigerian or Congolese. Leopold Senghor, the poet of the
negritude, or Sheik Anta Diop, the philologist of the afrocentrism, testify
of this institution. Why this ideology was able to take shape in the
point to come true under the shape of “nations-states”
formally independent ? Because at a given moment, they correspond well
enough to a state of the fight of class, to joint aspiration of several
classes. Rarely the national bourgeoisie, which in its majority likes the
order and looks after its good relations with the power in place. On the
other hand, the petty-bourgeoisie (storekeepers, lawyers, etc.), the
management (foremen, engineers), the employees (in the countries where they
are rare and are more a part of the class of the Intellectuals than the
proletariat) meet themselves there gladly, because the nationalism supplies
them the possibility of spreading
their restrained talents and places occupied by the power and the colonial
administration. But they does not need to neglect the fact that, in the
colonial situation, the workers (industrial or agricultural) face State as
foreigner. They are brought to fight against the colonial power; opponent's
identity incites to an alliance, which will never be anything else than the
stepladder for the intermediate classes to establish their own state power.
From this moment, what was only ideology, myth, becomes a cruel reality. Speaking about the end of “nations-states”
needs to prove that they never existed otherwise than as capitalist
institutions. That’s why it seems to me preferable to think only in terms of
States on one side, nationalist ideology on the other one. For the current
period, the relative ascent in power of nationalisms seems to explain itself
by a new configuration, a new relation between classes. The question of the
debt became central in numerous countries. When a plan of the IMF implies the
liquidation of all the social services (health, education, unemployment,
etc.), that is of what arose from the fordist compromise (high social salary,
social peace, increased productivity, totally alienating work), it pulls a
reaction which can go to a nationalist direction as far as this liquidation
is perceived as “foreigner” , mostly “American” . The
ruling class - high bureaucracy of State - has no major reason for worrying,
because it lives from extraction of the tax intended to pay the debt. But the
intermediate classes, notably the social management (teachers, social
employees, etc.) can overturn into left sovereignism ; and even workers are
susceptible, in these conditions, to look for a solution in the nationalism,
not always left-oriented. For its part, the national bourgeoisie loses its
intermediary's role when companies become directly established at home in a
greater way, favoured by reduction in the customs duties. The goods are in
direct competition with the world market, and they are widely losing. In
these conditions, they can join a nationalism ,and the more reactionary one,
as it lacks social claims. 3)
The discussion about the imperialism passes next to
a major question if it does not approach the study of the international
institutions (UNO, IMF, WTO, BIT, NATO, etc.). Even if sketches exist before
1945, it is from WWII that they take a ceaselessly increasing importance. In
the current phase, they were strengthened by the monopolarity generated by
the disappearance of the USSR and its international weight. In other words,
there is an increasing integration of States in a network of international
institutions, which become dense and whose interweaving with the national
politics goes growing. The time when the resolutions of the UNO were
ineffective cloths disappeared, even if their application remains subjected
to the interests of the permanent members [in the jan.19 discussion this
point was justly contested by c. Malcolm] . IMF and World Bank give the tone
of the social, industrial, financial, agricultural politics, etc. when they
do not substitute themselves to States in this role. And NATO, widened and
doubled by temporary international coalitions, serves as arm armed in this
international "global governance”. The sovereign power of states decreases as the
sovereign power of the world institutions increases. It is on the basis of
this transfer of sovereign power that Toni Negri suggested the existence of a
world Empire that succeed imperialism. In its version, Empire is an
already existing reality; this Empire has no centre, no suburb. This vision
is not doubtless very remote from those of the international, extremely
cosmopolitan bureaucracies of the institution in their recruitment and welded
by an internationalist ideology. But the internal criticisms of the
neo-operaism are less affirmative on this point, because the question of the
weight of the USA in the Empire remains posed. Two possible optics: 1/ Empire
already exists, but it has a centre, the US administration, which constitutes
in a sense its federal government. In that case, the Empire is a overgrowth
of the American State, arrived at a certain stage of accumulation of capital.
2/ Empire do not exist yet, it’s still in gestation in the international
institutions. In which case, one can wonder if there will be no conflict
between the American state and the international institutions, from which the
Empire would appear. In every case, the analysis of the relations between
international institutions and American state is not without interest. For
example, the recent condemnation of the USA by the WTO for fiscal helps to
the exports, even if it is not completely the first, shows well enough the
contradiction of both logics : the one, the national and of state
control, which stays completely in line with the classic imperialism; the
other, international and liberal, based on the idea that the international
law applies to all, so is already worldwide or “imperial” . 4) Globalisation arises from workers struggles. One can define the globalisation by some criteria,
among which the multiplication of transnational companies, fragmentation of
production line and growth of financial markets. In the imperialist phase,
the industrial working class is concentrated in colonizing countries, at the
need by the dismantling of the industries of colonies (well known case for
India). In colonized countries, working class is essentially limited to the
extraction of raw, mining or agricultural materials. This situation favours
the constitution of an industrial working class concentrated in the western
countries, and inside these countries, by cities workers, of huge factories,
of “workers citadels”. The
constant fight for the improvement of the workers condition (direct and
social salary, conditions of employment, etc.) gives a more important labour
cost, and at the same time, an increasing replacement of workers by machines
- a machine does not strike, is not absent, does not sabotage, etc. - so a
change of the organic composition of the capital (coming back ! One will
note, in the same order of idea, that the rate of profit itself is bound to
level of class struggle, an element which
missed up to here in the debates on this question [this note is linked to the
debate on profit rate with Claude Bitot]). It is the necessity to lower the
labour cost, to liquidate workers fortresses, that drives the capitalist
class to dismantle the industry of the western countries to delocalise it
(even if this movement has got limits, shall be it only in the costs of
relocation). The fragmentation of the production line is so the capitalist
answer to the working class fighting spirit. At the same time, “national liberation” movement fix
development of heavy industry as first objective to reach the autonomy /
sovereign power (in the Marxist-Leninist fable, heavy industry allows to
develop a working class and a socialized industry, so put the bases of the
socialism). They make him it, as much as possible, by mobilizing the energy
of workers (the Maoism representing the summit of this tendency, but it is not absent in the Peronism or even
in the Spanish nationalism, for example). From this point of view, the
interests of the nationalist bureaucracies and the western capitalists
converge strikingly. But this movement is ceaselessly begun again : the
Iranian workers of the textile industry, for example, made important strikes
against the relocations in Asia of the South is. The system of the relocations
- dismantling of the working class according to its constitution - justifies
very widely the preservation of the national borders in a global world: every
state appears for the transnational capitalists as a space of labour cost to
be put on the opposite page with the required professional skill, and the tax
system allows to pay the state for the relations of production which are
current in the internal space. Finally, the power of financial markets - nightmare
of the left economists and the central banks because of their instability -
answers in the same way the relative weakness of the industrial profits. Even
if it is not completely about a “value without work” [concept developed by
the French ultraleft review Critical Times] because the banking and financial
sector occupies hundreds of thousand employees in the world, it offers the
possibility of remarkable profits far from the concerns caused by the
industry. But in return, it has a very destabilizing effect on the classic
production, which obliges States and international institutions to multiply
the systems of financial stabilization. Even if this reading a little operaist /
subjectivist of the globalisation has its limits, it seems to me that she has
the merit to put the problem under the angle of the proletariat, except the
intra-economic reflections to which one too often tends to limit himself. Put
the proletariat in the centre of our reflection … Nico, 17/01/02
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