Re: the Nation State

[Jukka Laari <jlaari@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 5 Aug 1995 glevy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> ,yet, nationalism and nation-states pre-date capitalism. They may have, in
> many countries, arisen alongside each other, but that does not mean that
> nations are a result of capitalist development.

Perhaps not a direct result.

Benedict Anderson wrote in "Imagined Community" about birth of modern
nationalism, how technological innovations and political decisions were
meeded in order to modern nationalism emerge. Besides, there seems to be
social developments behind nationalism that were very strongly structured
by capitalistic development.

So I would suppose that modern nationalism as 'we the nation' isn't so
free development like older histories of ideas have viewed it.

EEC, NAFTA and the like prove, that 'we' are ready pass nationalist phase
when the interests of Capital need it. EEC/EU especially is a tool to
de-nationalize western, capitalistic Europe. Instead of nations they are
proposing now 'Europe of provinces'... We'll see...

Jukka Laari


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