                    D.6 Are anarchists against Nationalism?

   Yes, anarchists are opposed to nationalism in all its forms. British
   anarchists Stuart Christie and Albert Meltzer simply point out the
   obvious: "As a nation implies a state, it is not possible to be a
   nationalist and an anarchist." [The Floodgates of Anarchy, p. 59fn]

   To understand this position, we must first define what anarchists mean
   by nationalism. For many people, it is just the natural attachment to
   home, the place one grew up. Nationality, as Bakunin noted, is a
   "natural and social fact," as "every people and the smallest folk-unit
   has its own character, its own specific mode of existence, its own way
   of speaking, feeling, thinking, and acting; and it is this idiosyncrasy
   that constitutes the essence of nationality." [The Political Philosophy
   of Bakunin, p. 325] These feelings, however, obviously do not exist in
   a social vacuum. They cannot be discussed without also discussing the
   nature of these groups and what classes and other social hierarchies
   they contain. Once we do this, the anarchist opposition to nationalism
   becomes clear.

   This means that anarchists distinguish between nationality (that is,
   cultural affinity) and nationalism (confined to the state and
   government itself). This allows us to define what we support and oppose
   -- nationalism, at root, is destructive and reactionary, whereas
   cultural difference and affinity is a source of community, social
   diversity and vitality.

   Such diversity is to be celebrated and allowed to express it itself on
   its own terms. Or, as Murray Bookchin puts it, "[t]hat specific peoples
   should be free to fully develop their own cultural capacities is not
   merely a right but a desideratum. The world would be a drab place
   indeed if a magnificent mosaic of different cultures does not replace
   the largely decultured and homogenised world created by modern
   capitalism." ["Nationalism and the 'National Question'", pp. 8-36.
   Society and Nature, No. 5, pp. 28-29] But, as he also warns, such
   cultural freedom and variety should not be confused with nationalism.
   The latter is far more (and ethically, a lot less) than simple
   recognition of cultural uniqueness and love of home. Nationalism is the
   love of, or the desire to create, a nation-state and for this reason
   anarchists are opposed to it, in all its forms.

   This means that nationalism cannot and must not be confused with
   nationality. The later is a product of social processes while the
   former to a product of state action and elite rule. Social evolution
   cannot be squeezed into the narrow, restricting borders of the nation
   state without harming the individuals whose lives make that social
   development happen in the first place.

   The state, as we have seen, is a centralised body invested with power
   and a social monopoly of force. As such it pre-empts the autonomy of
   localities and peoples, and in the name of the "nation" crushes the
   living, breathing reality of "nations" (i.e. peoples and their
   cultures) with one law, one culture and one "official" history. Unlike
   most nationalists, anarchists recognise that almost all "nations" are
   in fact not homogeneous, and so consider nationality to be far wider in
   application than just lines on maps, created by conquest. Hence we
   think that recreating the centralised state in a slightly smaller area,
   as nationalist movements generally advocate, cannot solve what is
   called the "national question."

   Ultimately, as Rudolf Rocker argued, the "nation is not the cause, but
   the result of the state. It is the state that creates the nation, not
   the nation the state." Every state "is an artificial mechanism imposed
   upon [people] from above by some ruler, and it never pursues any other
   ends but to defend and make secure the interests of privileged
   minorities within society." Nationalism "has never been anything but
   the political religion of the modern state." [Nationalism and Culture,
   p. 200 and p. 201] It was created to reinforce the state by providing
   it with the loyalty of a people of shared linguistic, ethnic, and
   cultural affinities. And if these shared affinities do not exist, the
   state will create them by centralising education in its own hands,
   imposing an "official" language and attempting to crush cultural
   differences from the peoples within its borders.

   This is because it treats groups of people not as unique individuals
   but rather "as if they were individuals with definite traits of
   character and peculiar psychic properties or intellectual qualities"
   which "must irrevocably lead to the most monstrously deceptive
   conclusions." [Rocker, Op. Cit., p. 437] This creates the theoretical
   justification for authoritarianism, as it allows the stamping out of
   all forms of individuality and local customs and cultures which do not
   concur with the abstract standard. In addition, nationalism hides class
   differences within the "nation" by arguing that all people must unite
   around their supposedly common interests (as members of the same
   "nation"), when in fact they have nothing in common due to the
   existence of hierarchies and classes.

   Malatesta recognised this when he noted that you cannot talk about
   states like they were "homogeneous ethnographic units, each having its
   proper interests, aspirations, and mission, in opposition to the
   interests, aspirations, and mission of rival units. This may be true
   relatively, as long as the oppressed, and chiefly the workers, have no
   self-consciousness, fail to recognise the injustice of their inferior
   position, and make themselves the docile tools of the oppressors." In
   that case, it is "the dominating class only that counts" and this
   "owning to its desire to conserve and to enlarge its power . . . may
   excite racial ambitions and hatred, and send its nation, its flock,
   against 'foreign' countries, with a view to releasing them from their
   present oppressors, and submitting them to its own political and
   economical domination." Thus anarchists have "always fought against
   patriotism, which is a survival of the past, and serves well the
   interests of the oppressors." [Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p.
   244]

   Thus nationalism is a key means of obscuring class differences and
   getting those subject to hierarchies to accept them as "natural." As
   such, it plays an important role in keeping the current class system
   going (unsurprisingly, the nation-state and its nationalism arose at
   the same time as capitalism). As well dividing the working class
   internationally, it is also used within a nation state to turn working
   class people born in a specific nation against immigrants. By getting
   native-born workers to blame newcomers, the capitalist class weakens
   the resistance to their power as well as turning economic issues into
   racial/nationalist ones. In practice, however, nationalism is a "state
   ideology" which boils down to saying it is "'our country' as opposed to
   theirs, meaning we were the serfs of the government first." [Christie
   and Meltzer, Op. Cit., p. 71] It tries to confuse love of where you
   grow up or live with "love of the State" and so nationalism is "not the
   faithful expression" of this natural feeling but rather "an expression
   distorted by means of a false abstraction, always for the benefit of an
   exploiting minority." [Bakunin, Op. Cit., p. 324]

   Needless to say, the nationalism of the bourgeoisie often comes into
   direct conflict with the people who make up the nation it claims to
   love. Bakunin simply stated a truism when he noted that the capitalist
   class "would rather submit" to a "foreign yoke than renounce its social
   privileges and accept economic equality." This does not mean that the
   "bourgeoisie is unpatriotic; on the contrary patriotism, in the
   narrowest sense, is its essential virtue. But the bourgeoisie love
   their country only because, for them, the country, represented by the
   State, safeguards their economic, political, and social privileges. Any
   nation withdrawing their protection would be disowned by them,
   Therefore, for the bourgeoisie, the country is the State. Patriots of
   the State, they become furious enemies of the masses if the people,
   tried of sacrificing themselves, of being used as a passive footstool
   by the government, revolt against it. If the bourgeoisie had to choose
   between the masses who rebel against the State" and a foreign invader,
   "they would surely choose the latter." [Bakunin on Anarchism, pp.
   185-6] Given this, Bakunin would have not been surprised by either the
   rise of Fascism in Italy nor when the Allies in post-fascist Italy
   "crush[ed] revolutionary movements" and gave "their support to fascists
   who made good by becoming Allied Quislings." [Marie-Louise Berneri,
   Neither East Nor West, p. 97]

   In addition, nationalism is often used to justify the most horrific
   crimes, with the Nation effectively replacing God in terms of
   justifying injustice and oppression and allowing individuals to wash
   their hands of their own actions. For "under cover of the nation
   everything can be hid" argues Rocker (echoing Bakunin, we must note).
   "The national flag covers every injustice, every inhumanity, every lie,
   every outrage, every crime. The collective responsibility of the nation
   kills the sense of justice of the individual and brings man to the
   point where he overlooks injustice done; where, indeed, it may appear
   to him a meritorious act if committed in the interests of the nation."
   [Op. Cit., p. 252] So when discussing nationalism:

     "we must not forget that we are always dealing with the organised
     selfishness of privileged minorities which hide behind the skirts of
     the nation, hide behind the credulity of the masses. We speak of
     national interests, national capital, national spheres of interest,
     national honour, and national spirit; but we forget that behind all
     this there are hidden merely the selfish interests of power-loving
     politicians and money-loving business men for whom the nation is a
     convenient cover to hide their personal greed and their schemes for
     political power from the eyes of the world." [Rocker, Op. Cit., pp.
     252-3]

   Hence we see the all too familiar sight of successful "national
   liberation" movements replacing foreign oppression with a home-based
   one. Nationalist governments introduce "the worse features of the very
   empires from which oppressed peoples have tried to shake loose. Not
   only do they typically reproduce state machines that are as oppressive
   as the ones that colonial powers imposed on them, but they reinforce
   those machines with cultural, religious, ethnic, and xenophobic traits
   that are often used to foster regional and even domestic hatreds and
   sub-imperialisms." [Bookchin, Op. Cit., p. 30] This is unsurprising as
   nationalism delivers power to local ruling classes as it relies on
   taking state power. As a result, nationalism can never deliver freedom
   to the working class (the vast majority of a given "nation") as its
   function is to build a mass support base for local elites angry with
   imperialism for blocking their ambitions to rule and exploit "their"
   nation and fellow country people.

   In fact, nationalism is no threat to capitalism or even to imperialism.
   It replaces imperialist domination with local elite and foreign
   oppression and exploitation with native versions. That sometimes the
   local elites, like imperial ones, introduce reforms which benefit the
   majority does not change the nature of the new regimes although this
   does potentially bring them into conflict with imperialist powers. As
   Chomsky notes, for imperialism the "threat is not nationalism, but
   independent nationalism, which focuses on the needs of the population,
   not merely the wealthy sectors and the foreign investors to whom they
   are linked. Subservient nationalism that does not succumb to these
   heresies is quite welcome" and it is "quite willing to deal with them
   if they are willing to sell the country to the foreign master, as Third
   World elites (including now those in much of Eastern Europe) are often
   quite willing to do, since they may greatly benefit even as their
   countries are destroyed." ["Nationalism and the New World Order" pp.
   1-7, Society and Nature, No. 5, pp. 4-5] However, independent
   nationalism is like social democracy in imperialist countries in that
   it may, at best, reduce the evils of the class system and social
   hierarchies but it never gets rid of them (at worse, it creates new
   classes and hierarchies clustered around the state bureaucracy).

   Anarchists oppose nationalism in all its forms as harmful to the
   interests of those who make up a given nation and their cultural
   identities. As Rocker put it, peoples and groups of peoples have
   "existed long before the state put in its appearance" and "develop
   without the assistance of the state. They are only hindered in their
   natural development when some external power interferes by violence
   with their life and forces it into patterns which it has not known
   before." A nation, in contrast, "encompasses a whole array of different
   peoples and groups of peoples who have by more or less violent means
   been pressed together into the frame of a common state." In other
   words, the "nation is, then, unthinkable without the state." [Op. Cit.,
   p. 201]

   Given this, we do support nationality and cultural difference,
   diversity and self-determination as a natural expression of our love of
   freedom and support for decentralisation. This should not, however, be
   confused with supporting nationalism. In addition, it goes without
   saying that a nationality that take on notions of racial, cultural or
   ethnic "superiority" or "purity" or believe that cultural differences
   are somehow rooted in biology get no support from anarchists. Equally
   unsurprisingly, anarchists have been the most consistent foes of that
   particularly extreme form of nationalism, fascism ("a politico-economic
   state where the ruling class of each country behaves towards its own
   people as . . . it has behaved to the colonial peoples under its heel."
   [Bart de Ligt, The Conquest of Violence, p. 74]). Moreover, we do not
   support those aspects of specific cultures which reflect social
   hierarchies (for example, many traditional cultures have sexist and
   homophobic tendencies). By supporting nationality, we do not advocate
   tolerating these. Nor do the negative aspects of specific cultures
   justify another state imposing its will on it in the name of
   "civilising" it. As history shows, such "humanitarian" intervention is
   just a mask for justifying imperialist conquest and exploitation and it
   rarely works as cultural change has to flow from below, by the actions
   of the oppressed themselves, in order to be successful.

   In opposition to nationalism, Anarchists are "proud of being
   internationalists." We seek "the end of all oppression and of all
   exploitation," and so aim "to awaken a consciousness of the antagonism
   of interests between dominators and dominated, between exploiters and
   workers, and to develop the class struggle inside each country, and the
   solidarity among all workers across the frontiers, as against any
   prejudice and any passion of either race or nationality." [Malatesta,
   Op. Cit., p. 244]

   We must stress that anarchists, being opposed to all forms of
   exploitation and oppression, are against a situation of external
   domination where the one country dominates the people and territory of
   another country (i.e., imperialism -- see [1]section D.5). This flows
   from our basic principles as "[t]rue internationalism will never be
   attained except by the independence of each nationality, little or
   large, compact or disunited -- just as anarchy is in the independence
   of each individual. If we say no government of man over man, how can
   [we] permit the government of conquered nationalities by the conquering
   nationalities?" [Kropotkin, quoted by Martin A. Miller, Kropotkin, p.
   231] As we discuss in the [2]next section, while rejecting Nationalism
   anarchists do not necessarily oppose national liberation struggles
   against foreign domination.

References

   1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secD5.html
   2. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secD7.html
