Neue Debatte - Special Edition - Long Essay on Left Strategy #002 - 04/2017 | Page 21

3 On nations and global capitalism
than 300 organisations from 22 countries 3 assembled in Paris to
launch the Socialist International the French Socialist Lafargue ex-
claimed. “You are brothers and you only have one enemy: the pri-
vate capital – may it be Prussian, English, French or Chinese.” In
1848 already the Communist Manifesto left no doubt: “The working
men have no country”. One year before World War I left Social Dem-
ocrats in Germany still spread the slogan: “We stay sworn enemies to
Militarism. No man and no penny for this regime!” 4 That was the
radical rejection of “nations”, “nation states”, “fatherlands” and mili-
tarism. A banner on the wall at the Paris assembly hall in 1889
claimed: “Proletarians of all countries unite!”
May be this sounds antiquated for our modern ears. But the idea be-
hind is more topical than ever. Had the socialist movement cherished
its internationalism instead of finally surrendering to “their” national
upper classes mankind possibly had avoided at least World War I.
3.2 Nations and nation states: relicts of history
I am stressing this issue relatively detailed because it is time to revi-
talize this tradition of active anti-nationalism. The development of
global capitalism has reached historical dimensions, which have out-
dated the narrow boundaries of nation states. Nations and nationali-
ty are difficult to explain because they are not real. As Benedict An-
derson argued in 1983 they are mere imagined communities. 5 A na-
tion is a fictitious unit and nationalism is the fictitious application of
this fiction. For Rosa Luxemburg a “right of nations“ and “civic equali-
ty“ were metaphysical phrases in order to disguise flagrant economic
inequalities. 6
This imagination was the early background music for an educated
middle-class, bourgeois men of business and entrepreneurial capital-
ists emancipating from an aristocratic and autocratic world. The radi-
cally modifying social conditions were hailed as the formation of a
nation. The new bourgeois system of government was alleged as de-
3
They came from France, Germany, Great Britain, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden,
Finland (then Russian), Italy, Spain, Portugal, Russia, Poland (then Russian), Czechoslovakia and Hungary (then both
Austro-Hungary), Bulgaria, Romania, and the USA.
4
“Wir bleiben Todfeinde des Militarismus. Diesem System keinen Mann und keinen Groschen!“ From a Report on a
general meeting of Berlin Social Democrat voter association, Aug. 26 th , 1913.
5 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London 2 1991.
6 Rosa Luxemburg, Nationalitätenfrage und Autonomie (1908/09), ed. by Holger Politt, Berlin 2012, p. 51-52.
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