1 ON NATIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY • • A MARXIST EXAMINATION Ofer CASSIF The London School of Economics and Political Science PhD UMI Number: U213414 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U213414 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 F a^EoooomcSoenc^ 2 ABSTRACT ‘Historical development toward a universal community of civilization,’ said Rosa Luxemburg, ‘will, like all social development, take place in the midst of a contradiction... ’ Indeed, on its face it seems that the simultaneous consolidation and spreading (within a progressing global order) of nationalist particularism, on the one hand, and of the support for democracy, on the other, do constitute such a contradiction. But is this really the case? Are nationalism and democracy mutually exclusive, or are they reconcilable after all? In this project, to paraphrase Rousseau's words at the beginning of The Social Contract, it is my purpose to enquire whether it is possible to reconcile nationalism with democracy, taking nationalism as it is and democracy as it may be. The dissertation shows that both democracy (as we commonly understand it today) and nationalism are strongly embedded in modem conditions (primarily capitalism) and their inherent contradictions, namely, the development of the autonomous self, on the one hand, and the loss of community and prevalence of identity crisis, on the other. Liberal theories of democracy, the thesis suggests, celebrate the development of the autonomous self but largely neglect or ignore the problem of identity crisis, hence contribute precisely to moral and political tendencies they normally reject. Nationalism and its academic sympathisers, though, may supply a solution to identity crisis but too easily or carelessly sacrifice individual liberty and equality on the altar of renewed Gemeinschaft-hke communities. What is urgently needed, I argue, is a form of democracy that could transcend the contradictions latent in modem capitalism and deliver a solution to identity crisis and alienation without subverting the values of individual equality and liberty. Such a democracy, it is concluded, must be a socialist one in which the means of identity production are collectively owned. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS VOLUME 1; 1 Introduction 6 1.1 Global Capitalism, Nationalism, and Democracy 6 1.2 The Thesis 13 2 Identity and Premodem Communities 22 2.1 Primordialism and Modernism 22 2.2 Path-Dependence and Primordernism 28 2.3 Old Loyalties asGemeinschaften 37 2.4 Gemeinschaft and Individual Identity 46 2.5 Notes on Hegemony and Alienation 72 3 The Consequences of Modernity 80 3.1 Modem Conditions and the Decline o f Old Gemeinschaften 80 3.2 Sources of Identity Crisis 91 3.3 Two Reactions to Modem Conditions: Democracy and Nationalism 101 4 Nationalism and Ethnicity 115 4.1 Some Academic Observations on Ethnicity and Nationality 115 4.2 The Nationalist Conception of the Nation 121 4.3 Awakening the‘Sleeping Beauty’ 136 4.4 Civic Nationalism? 144 5 National Self-Determination 149 5.1 National Self-Determination: General Remarks 149 5.2 Nationalism and the Meaning of National Self-Determination 158 5.3 Nationalism and the Right to National Self-Determination 160 4 5.4 National Self-Determination as an Ethnic Safeguard 171 6 Homeland and Foreigners 190 6.1 Nation and Homeland 190 6.2 Realpolitik in the Nationalist Policy 198 6.3 The Misodemos 207 VOLUME 2: 7 Some Puzzles About Democracy 217 7.1 Terminological Chaos (or, the Importance of Being Coherent) 217 7.2 Popular Sovereignty or Decision-Making? 222 7.3 Between Deliberation and Decision-Making 228 7.4 A Question of Equality 236 7.5 Consequences of Unequal Power 245 7.6 Some Moral Observations 256 8 The Democratic Conditions and the Nation 266 8.1 Choice Situation and Contractarianism 266 8.2 The Scanlonian/Barryian Construct: the Motivation of Fairness 276 8.3 The Scanlonian/Barryian Construct: Equality and Information 288 8.4 What Is Not the Democratic Conception of the Nation? 304 8.5 What Is the Democratic Conception of the Nation? 310 9 National Self-Determination Revisited 320 9.1 Some Preliminary Thoughts 320 9.2 National Self-Determination: General Remarks 324 9.3 Democracy and the Meaning of National Self-Determination 329 9.4 Undemocratic Nations and Self-Determination 342 5 10 Whose Right? Which Territory? 351 10.1 The Right to National Self-Determination 351 10.2 Territorial Demarcation: Historical Possession? 359 10.3 Territorial Demarcation: Majoritarian Decision? 366 10.4 Territorial Demarcation: A Question of Interests 372 11 Socialist Democracy: Liberal Democracy Sublated? 383 Bibliography 391 6 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 GLOBAL CAPITALISM, NATIONALISM, AND DEMOCRACY Modernity, suggested Marx, is better understood as the kind of civilisation formed by the domination of the capitalist mode of production. The dominance of capitalism (or, rather, industrial capitalism), Marx observed, involves three interrelated trends of expansion, each of which constantly accelerates due to the rapid development of the productive forces inherent in capitalism: the consolidation of ever bigger industries at the expense of small manufacturers and the self-producing peasant household, urbanisation, and globalisation. As he put it in the Communist Manifesto, there is no need to abolish ‘the property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant...the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it; and is still destroying it daily.’1 As far as urbanisation is concerned, ‘The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule ofthe town. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.’2 And in regard to globalisation, Marx observed that The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the XK. Marx & F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto, in Karl Marx-Selected Writings, ed. D. McLellan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977; infra: MSW), p. 232. 2Ibid., p. 225. 7 whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country....In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one­ sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature. The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization.3 Global capitalism, Marx added, not only reduces national differences, but also diminishes conflicts and hostility between peoples. In his own words, ‘National differences and antagonisms betweenpeoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom ofcommerce, to the world-market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.’4 3Ibid., pp. 224-225. 4Ibid., p. 235. 8 But was Marx right in his depiction? To a great extent he was: despite the uneven scope and pace it takes in different regions and societies, the movement towards ever bigger businesses is a paramount tendency nowadays; gigantic corporations and firms (industrial and others, e.g., communication companies and networks) often merge and cartelise and firmly winnow out small enterprises, retail chains and shopping centres succeed small shops and stalls, and where the movement of people from rural to urban areas (on a world scale a prevalent tendency in itself) is still limited, a growing number of the villagers there nonetheless become city-based labourers.5 Globalisation, in its turn (and therein the economic ‘universal interdependence of nations’), is a bare feet that nobody could seriously deny: whether one likes this feet or not is, of course, another question. To be sure, the state still retains some power and to some extent still decides (despite the globalisation of capital - the internationalisation of both industry and finance - and the dictates of the IMF, WTO, World Bank and others of that kind) how to distribute its domestic resources and wealth.6 Further, ...the role of the state has grown substantially since the early 1970s; state policies have become increasingly decisive on the international front, not more futile. Governments have become more and more involved in active management of monetary policy and interest rates in order to condition exchange-rate fluctuations and short-term capital flows. They 5See for example the details regarding movement of labour power from the countryside to the city in East Asia in the World Bank Group, Annual Report 1997: East Asia and Pacific (Washington DC: World Bank Group, 1997), table 4. 6See A. Giddens, The Third Way (Tel Aviv: Yedioth Aharonot, 2000), pp. 51-56. (In Hebrew). 9 have become actually and potentially decisive in bargaining over production and investment agreements... [Ejveryone including transnational corporations has become increasingly dependent upon co-ordinated state intervention for restructuring and resolution of the underlying dynamics of crisis.7 But, as B.