Will nation-states disappear?

 

The crisis of the 1930s, which led to World War II and culminated in the Cold War, ended with the economic collapse of the USSR and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Capitalism endured and could not be overcome as the Marxist socialist project intended. Some, like Fukuyama, believed that history would end with the definitive triumph of liberal democracies based on this economic system. But it only took a few decades to witness the emergence of a new development of capitalism, driven by a new industrial revolution supported by the internet, powerful new computers and smartphones, artificial intelligence, and so on, which generated the new ideology of globalization. Just as socialist ideology saw capitalism as an obstacle to progress that had to be destroyed and overcome, the new progressive ideology of globalization sees the nation-state as a brake and an obstacle to its development, which must be eliminated and replaced by other forms of political administration.

The destruction or overcoming of nation-states is sought through the creation of supranational groupings, as is the case with the European Union. But in the case of the USA or China, which are large continental nation-states, they could only be overcome by creating a Global State, as some propose, with a global government, police force, and courts. The problem is that a Global State would cease to be a state in the strict sense, if we consider that a state is not a separate entity that can exist without confronting an external environment of other states or pre-state societies that threaten its borders. A Global State could only exist if extraterrestrial beings appeared on our earthly horizon, threatening our existence, and against whom we Earthlings united in a single state. But such a hypothesis belongs to the realm of historical fiction. Therefore, such a Global State is utopian and, strictly speaking, impossible.

What would happen if the current nation-states were destroyed is that their inhabitants would remain organized into regional power blocs, due to the natural persistence of tribal ties observed, for example, in the so-called ethnic nationalities resurging in Europe as a result of the weakening of national sovereignties transferred to Brussels. But such “micro-nations” or “fractional states,” which would spring up like mushrooms in the so-called “Europe of the peoples” through secessionist processes, like those of the Corsicans, Basques, Catalans, Bretons, etc., are not truly states in the sense of the political nationalism that emerged from the French Revolution, but rather a kind of return to pre-state racial and cultural tribal structures. Therefore, rather than progress, what would occur here would be a historical regression.

The philosopher Herbert Spencer prophesied, back in the 19th century, that the triumph of socialism would be unstoppable, but that wherever it occurred, instead of creating a more advanced industrial society, it would lead to a resurgence of the militaristic societies that existed before the industrial age. This happened with the growing Soviet militarism of the Cold War. We could say today that the triumph of globalist ideologies, which seek to overcome the political structures of modern nation-states, where it is already taking place, will, rather than lead to a more progressive and advanced society, unleash a return to earlier tribal societies, or even to the city-states of ancient times, before the emergence of modern nation-states.

This is the direction taken by the massive irregular immigration promoted in recent decades by supranational governments, such as those of the European Union or the USA, based on the idea that all cultures are equal and can be tolerated and coexist in harmony. The traditional tolerance of Western democracy is invoked to justify this, forgetting that its very proponents, such as Spinoza (“These men usurp all authority, declare themselves immediately chosen by God, proclaim their decrees divine and those emanating from the government merely human, in order to subject them to divine decrees, that is, to their own decrees. Who is unaware of how contrary this excess is to the good of the State?”, Theological-Political Treatise, end of Chapter XX), or John Locke, already placed limits, for example, on religious tolerance when it could endanger the very laws of the democratic state. Religions like Islam, which does not accept the Western separation of Church and State, seem difficult to reconcile with modern Western states, generating veritable medieval ghettos, with neighborhoods where Sharia law prevails over Western laws and customs. Will the nation-state withstand such changes?

Manuel F. Lorenzo

The Crisis of the 1930s and the Current Crisis

 

To understand what is happening to us, it is advisable to look to history for similar situations that can help us orient ourselves toward what may come by comparing them with what occurred then. It is therefore not only a matter of seeing the similarities, but also of grasping the differences, because history, as Hegel maintained, advances in a spiral, and the functional parallels that can be observed must be adjusted to new parameters that mark the difference in historical level. The currently dominant trend in the media is the danger of a return, in Western countries, to an extreme right-wing totalitarianism similar to the fascist and Nazi totalitarianism of the 1930s. In this way, the left presents itself as the true defender of democracy against this perceived threat in new anti-system parties, such as Vox in Spain, which it demonizes as fascist.

But this can be done from a biased and false interpretation of history, which can be exposed with a deeper analysis of what happened in the 1930s. The contradiction that ignited political polarization was that of capitalism/socialism, whose political and ideological origins lie in the 19th century. The victorious Russian Revolution of 1917 provoked a confrontation between capitalism and communism that culminated in World War II and the division of the world into the so-called Cold War. Likewise, within the Western world, a division arose between liberalism and fascism in an attempt to halt the seemingly unstoppable advance of communism. In Italy and Germany, faced with the middle classes' panic over worker-led communism, the extreme reaction of the fascist and Nazi parties emerged, destroying their fragile liberal democracies and establishing right-wing totalitarian regimes as a reaction to the perceived threat of a dictatorship of the proletariat like the one established in Russia.

However, in England, then the world's leading power, and in the USA, both established liberal democracies, neither communism nor fascism gained much traction. Nevertheless, both countries were forced to abandon the dogmas of classical liberalism, which prohibited state intervention in the economy, by promoting Roosevelt's New Deal and Keynesian economics to win the war and overcome the Great Depression of 1929. Ultimately, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, the economic rivalry between the USA and the USSR was resolved with the collapse of the Soviet model of economic interventionism. The USA, with its state intervention, did not eliminate the market or private investment, which allowed it to create a welfare state, especially in Europe after the Marshall Plan, which integrated the working class into the system and prevented its predicted impoverishment.

The current crisis is very different in its origin, stemming from the technological globalization that has occurred in recent decades following the Cold War, and from the emergence of new globalist ideologies that aim not merely to destroy capitalism, but to make it completely global, for which the existence of borders established by nation-states is an obstacle. The contradiction now lies between Globalism and Nationalism. However, certain functional similarities are reappearing with this different parameter. The main one is the political polarization we are witnessing with the rise of new radical political forces with opposing views. The emergence of the movement to globally save the planet, along with the woke movement that advocates for the promotion of multicultural societies that allow for the equal coexistence of all cultures, is disrupting the traditional, standardized liberal democracies of the West. The introduction of “political correctness” stemming from such dogmas increasingly resembles a “dictatorship of minorities,” formerly persecuted or stigmatized, equivalent to what the “dictatorship of the proletariat” was during the Great Depression. This woke movement, which began in American universities, derived from Foucault’s post-structuralist French philosophy—just as Marxism derived from the so-called “Young Hegelians” of the University of Berlin—has taken hold in the USA through the Democratic Party led by Obama, and has spread throughout Europe, seriously transforming the original project of the European Union into one subordinated to globalist policies. The Republican Party under Trump has emerged as a counter-reaction.

In Spain, the traditional Socialist Party has mutated, starting with former President Zapatero and continuing with the current President Sánchez, becoming a globalist party and a proponent of woke ideology. The fundamental problem, we believe, lies in whether the destruction of nation-states is possible or desirable, just as communism believed it could destroy capitalism and replace it with a better system.

Manuel F. Lorenzo