So we have discussed the death of the nation-state at length. Now that borders mean less and less and warfare can be waged without asking citizens to sacrifice their lives, the question arises as to what form the new contract between the state and the individual will take.
This is a change that is in the process of occurring right now, so nobody knows for sure what the results will be. Many different scenarios have been advanced, and I find all of them somewhat unconvincing.*
The twentieth century saw a dramatic improvement in the standard of living (especially in the older nation-states because they’d had more time to perfect the terms of the contract between individual and state.) The state was invested in making sure that everybody was more or less content because, in the case of war, it would need people from all social classes to fight.
The future wars are wars of information, technology, security measures, communications, engineering, IT. It makes sense to expect the state to strengthen its contract with those who can help in this kind of war effort, kicking to the curb those who don’t. Obama’s reiterated statements that not everybody needs an education are a sign that the formation of a two-tier society is under way and is being conducted very consciously. Yesterday’s SCOTUS ruling is also part of this effort.
There is a lot of discussion about the growth of inequality these days. I believe that these discussions miss the point completely. We are gliding towards something enormously bigger than inequality. There will be a very large group of people who will be stateless within a state. They will have no contract with the state because the state has no use for them in case of war.
* Every scenario I have read includes the inevitable erosion of the welfare state. I can talk about alternative scenarios later if people are interested.
Clarissa's Blog 
So you would define humans as basically creatures of war?
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I’m talking only of the nation-state and the way it came to existence.
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I see that this is what you are trying to do, but you start at one point and then draw a whole lot of conclusions out of that that are unwarranted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy
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Why then are veterans so poorly treated? and mercenaries have such poor working conditions?
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Precisely because they have outlived their purpose.
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So when does the good treatment of soldiers happen? It is not before joining up … that is why they have to join up. It is marginal while they’re in.
Or are you only referring to officers?
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I’m definitely interested in the alternative scenarios you mention.
On the one hand, I can see what you are saying. But I doubt if such a system could be stable. If the state stops servicing a large section of the population, wouldn’t this section revolt? This is, for example, what happens now in many third world countries; a large section of the population is extremely poor, and has no rights. The state has essentially forgotten about them. So they steal and rob and riot and the result is a high crime. Not that the very rich care, of course, they have their own armed body-guards. But life becomes very difficult for middle-class and upper middle-class people.
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The basic well-being isn’t going anywhere. And it will prevent ant thought of revolt. Plus, there is a way of guaranteeing welfare outside of government. It is indebtedness. I think we’ll see large amount of debt relegated to future generations.
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As I have said before, I do not agree that a nation-state not needing citizens for war leads to a decline in the welfare state, because the Western European nations haven’t needed their citizens for war-fighting purposes for decades now, and the consequence was a huge growth in their social welfare states. Because if a government doesn’t have to pour money into defense spending, they can pour it into government programs.
In terms of not everybody needing an education, I actually agree with that partially. I think that our nation made a huge mistake with this idea that, “Everyone needs to go to college” and you’re somehow a lesser citizen if you have not. College/university was originally to teach one a specific set of skills. It was for a certain group of people in society who desired that additional education and had the work ethic and drive for it. Otherwise, many people do not need college. It is a waste of their time and money. They are plenty capable of making a living through something like a trade.
Now having said this, this does not mean that only certain people are supposed to have a core education. Everyone should know history, the workings of government, civics, how to read and write and do basic mathematics, basic economics, etc…but the thing is all of that stuff used to be taught in elementary school and high school. Thus even people who only had a high school education were still pretty educated in terms of what was needed for being a good citizen. College was for adding special additional education for special skillsets that required it.
These days, however, much of this stuff is not taught in elementary school and high school, or to the extent that it is, the discipline level I so poor, that many kids pay zero attention to it. And thus we have numerous people graduating high school who do not know basic history, can barely read and write, have zero critical thinking skills, can barely do basic arithmetic, couldn’t spell properly if their life depended on it, etc…and many I think have the impression that all of that stuff is supposed to be taught in college. It isn’t. You’re supposed to know most of it by the time you get to college, if you decide to go.
So we’ve had a decline in much of our elementary and high school education in the country while at the same time, this idea that “Everyone should go to college” because if they don’t, they’re supposedly a lesser citizen or something, which has thus resulted in the market being flooded with bachelor’s degrees, thus reducing their value, etc…
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Once again: many nation states are not “welfare states.” The discussion is about the nation form, not social safety net.
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True, but I was addressing the welfare states in those nations that do have them.
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There isn’t a single nation-state that hasn’t tried offering better living conditions to its people (in its own way) because that’s what the terms of the contract are. Even Khrushchev said that the struggle between communism and capitalism will be won by the system that will offer a better life to the people. As we can see, he was absolutely right. All of the talk about the USSR collapsing because Gorbachev did this or Reagan said that is obscuring this crucial fact: one system proved capable of offering a vastly superior standard of living than the other.
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It may seem pedantic to keep making this point, but whether or not a nation state is also a welfare state is not relevant to the theory Clarissa is trying to develop.
Let’s talk instead about citizenship and passports. I am a US citizen so I can work here legally. I also have various other rights here, that aren’t all about social welfare or being “cared for” by the state. Others, without US passports, do not have the kinds of rights and kinds of access I have (i.e. to make certain kinds of contracts, etc.).
But, it also means I can be drafted, if I am the right gender and age, etc. It is not in exchange for being SNAP or Medicaid eligible that I can be drafted, but because I am a citizen and have the general rights of citizens.
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I think I shouldn’t have used the word “welfare” because now everybody is stuck on the welfare state and there is no moving past it. Let’s say, well-being, standard of living, good life it whatever terminology people are comfortable with.
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I also do not buy into all the inequality rhetoric. I would say that this argument is grossly oversimplified at best and completely wrong at worst. What many confuse is a growth in relative inequality with being the same as absolute inequality. Wealth is the goods and services produced in society. The more goods and services made available to the masses, the wealthier the masses are. However, there will always be unequal wealth. The average person today is wealthier than the average person one hundred years ago was. The average person today is wealthier than even what the richest people in the world were one hundred years ago in certain ways (healthcare for example).
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I don’t think economic inequality is interesting precisely because of the reasons you list. The inequality of rights, opportunities, legal status is what is really interesting and disturbing.
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Some thinking with my fingers….
I tend to disagree with your take-care-of-the-peasants-so-they’ll-be-happy-as-canon-fodder scenario. It’s probably one ingredient but just one and has a heavy top-down elite-oriented bias that I’m always uncomfortable with as an explanation of social movements.
The fact is that elites don’t keep societies going and neither do the have-nots. It’s mostly what might be called the middle class (defined differently in different societies at different times) that keep the buses on time and the lights on. If there’s a better predictor of functional level of a society than the size of the middle class then I don’t know what it could be…
I’d say the types of nation states that most of us are familiar with a largely a product of the middle class rather than the elites. Here the bargain has been more pragmatic. (paraphrasing from Karen Davis though I’m not sure if she’s the originator of the argument): Participatory democracy is not a nice thing governments do for people but rather a pragmatic deal worked out by the elites and the middle class. Societies become more complicated and more educated people are needed to keep them going and once you reach a critical mass of education the people want a say in the decision making process.
The main trend I see going on is a retreat from participatory democracy. This is very clear in Europe as the technocratic elite is increasingly alarmed at the decisions made by the angry citizenry and increasingly tries to undermine the process.
The secondary trend I see happening is increased clannishness. For large swathes of the population allegiance to a nation state will be replaced be allegiance to a family, ethnic, religious or other organization and enlightened rationa self-interest after all.
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The rise of the middle-class in nation-states is precisely the result of the contract between individual and state that I’m talking about. The state has (had) reason to look out for the well-being of the citizens.
Have you noticed how often we are hearing about the destruction of the middle class now that the terms of the individual / state contract are changing?
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I am unsure it’s at core about warfare rather than acquisition of wealth. The latter can be done by numerous methods, except war, and often peaceful methods are much more effective. I once read a post comparing land as being the resource of the greatest value in the past to today’s technological solutions as playing the major role in influencing the quality of life. Imo, land is still important (especially for my country, but here it’s ideological more than anything else). However, especially in Europe (old countries with drawn borders), technological peaceful progress seems to be the key to wealth in the long term, not more wars anywhere.
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I’m not a Marxist, so it doesn’t make sense to expect Marxist analysis from me.
There is, by the way, zero evidence that the nation-state allowed anybody to accumulate more wealth than, say, the princely state or any other pre-modern form of state. Actually, the evidence shows that the opposite is true.
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I meant acquisition of wealth by the state.
Btw, who is this state that needs or not middle class? 1%? Ruling elite?
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A state is a form of co-existence between people and, as usual, it is much bigger than the sum of its parts. Take, for instance, a crowd of football fans. It is very likely to behave in a way that no single member would adopt or even endorse on his own.
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The only really interesting point in the post is the number of stateless people which is on the rise for sure. I wonder how this compares with the past, with all those slaves and other conquered peoples who were not citizens, and how many undocumented people there were, and so on.
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Are you OK? What’s with all the anger recently?
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Massive uninformed generalizations irritate me no end. I don’t have the same questions as musteryou about this series of posts, but we seem to have the same uneasiness about extreme overgeneralization.
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The death of the nation-state is as much of a commonplace as the idea that a nation is an “imagined community.”
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Are all countries nation-states? I’m thinking of Canada which has been an extraordinarily peaceful country with no imperial ambitions. On the one hand, we are protected by the U.S.(for the time being) but the U.S. has no right to insist Canada participate in any of its wars. And Canada has not had the death penalty for years. So Canada does not have the contract that citizens will be cannon fodder in exchange for certain rights.
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Today, there are nation-states, a few remnants of the Communist system (North Korea), and some failed states (in Africa). Nation-states are in different stages of development. There are old, consolidated nation-states, more recent ones, and the ones that are still in the process of consolidation (Israel is an obvious example).
Of course, Canada is a nation-state. There was a huge celebration of that fact yesterday. Canada has been a client-nation of the US militarily for a short while. However, if, say, a new Hitler were to arise and start another World War, I see no possibility of Canadians refusing to rise and defend their country massively. How many flags did you see yesterday? These flags symbolize massive allegiance to the nation-state. They are a product of the nation-state created precisely in order to signal and evoke this deep emotional attachment. Historically, this is a very recent phenomenon. We perceive it as normal and obvious because there are mechanisms in place to prevent us from noticing its artificiality.
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I don’t see Canada as a “nation” in the same way I see the United States, or European countries. For one thing, Canada has three nations, the First Nations, Quebec, and the Rest of Canada (RoC). The First Nations have a different position here than they do in the U.S., and nothing like Quebec exists. And the Rest of Canada is made up increasingly of different communities of immigrants. There are entire cities near Toronto that are Chinese or Indian. These immigrants fit in seamlessly. But there is no Canadian identity. Maybe that’s why everyone is happy to be here. But “massive allegiance to the nation-state”? This is an American concept. And as for another world war, you just said that people were no longer needed to fight wars. When the U.S. used over-the-top rhetoric to convince other countries that Iraq was a menace, Canada still declined to go to war. I see Canada as on the weak end of the nation-state spectrum, and perhaps that bodes well for its citizens.
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A state with defined borders, flag, anthem, passports, etcetera is a nation-state. And Canadians love listing the ways in which they are different from Americans. Of course, their national identity is a fabrication, just like any other national identity. Its greatest foundational myth us “We are different from Americans.” Which is an idea that is central to your comment. đŸ™‚
Of course, the state doesn’t need people to fight its wars but this is a very recent development. People are yet to catch up with it. And if the state needed them, they’d show up. For now.
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Japan is partly embracing neoliberalism but is also become more nationalistic, with the recent reinterpretation of its constitution and the capacity of its military to engage in warfare so long as that seems to be on behalf of its allies. It also has a pronatal policy and certain protectionist tarrifs, for now.
It will be interesting when aspects of reality that do not pertain to productivity or to the military, are no longer attended to by the government. You will have people, like Obama, for instance, denying the value of education, since after all this does not pertain to the needs of those civilisans who run the corporate hierarchies. You either get trained specifically to work for them, or you don’t “need” an education anymore. Your allegiance is not to anything broad or meaningful beyond the corporation you spend your life working for, and have been trained from an early age to fit into.
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“Obama’s reiterated statements that not everybody needs an education ” He really said that?
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It’s like his new obsession. Some people should be content with manual labor without aspiring to college education, he says.
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The new model for the US (pursued with dogged destermination by the elites for the last 40 years at least) is half-Mexico and half-India with a population born into a socio-economic class/caste and spending their life in it with very, very little opportunity (or threat) of upward or downward mobility.
And _that’s_ what’s gonna follow the nation state for the vast majority of humankind.
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I don’t see a turn towards inherited social class verge technology is becoming too sophisticated. The skill set that is required to have a respectable place in society is too sophisticated. You can’t inherit them. This can only be learned with hard work, dedication, great effort. The children of the rich or even marginally well-off are handicapped in this area from birth.
There will be a growing stratification but the social mobility (in both directions) that is already huge in advanced capitalist societies, especially North America, will become even greater.
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“The skill set that is required to have a respectable place in society is too sophisticated. You can’t inherit them”
I think the trend toward making unpaid internships a necessary part of the career advancement process (already happening) is a patch on that problem. Voila! A big roadblock for the poorer but smarter and a big boost for the more mediocre but more advantageously born….
There will still be some social mobility but it will be restricted to individual cases.
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Unpaid internships are for the poor, not for the rich. I’ve met enough people who come from rich (and simply well-off) families to have very low expectations in terms of them doing much work, especially for free.
I have a close friend who had two kids born when she was still poor and one more kid born after she became very well-off. The two born in poverty are happy, well-adjusted, over-achieving high-earners. The youngest is a spoiled useless whiny creature.
I don’t know any people born even to relative wealth who are not suffering in the workplace (from a host of problems that they in no way connect with their upbringing.)
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// half-Mexico and half-India with a population born into a socio-economic class/caste and spending their life in it with very, very little opportunity […]
And _that’s_ what’s gonna follow the nation state for the vast majority of humankind.
What can people do to prevent this development?
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Damned if I know.
I also think (riffing on the idea that the XXth century was one long struggle between capitalism, communism and fascism for supremacy (which capitalism won pretty handily as loathe as many are to admit it) I think we’re in for another long struggle between capitalism and theocracy (another failed idea whose adherents do not want to admit defeat under any conditions). This will mostly play out between the more secular capitalist world and the Muslim majority world in pursuit of political Islam (which has been a crashing failure everywhere it’s been tried* which doesn’t discourage its proponents).
*in terms of producing well functioning societies with citizenry that’s not itching to move away somewhere else
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Yes, this is true, a great problem is that a big part of the world’s population hasn’t even entered modernity yet (psychologically). Theirs is a losing struggle. And their greatest enemy is, indeed, capitalism.
In the US, those who are traumatized by modernity have been very inventive and have hitched their boats to the outdated, dead form of capitalism. They know that capitalism will destroy all they value in life but they are hoping to control how capitalism does that. Which is obviously a losing proposition.
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