Thinkers on both ends of the political spectrum agree that the nation-state is dying. For the first time in my memory, Marxists and anti – Marxists speak in the same voice on this crucial matter. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I haven’t read Fukuyama ‘ s new book yet, so I can’t say what position he takes. I’ve read his followers, though, and they agree the nation-state is dead.)
The difference between the two sides is in how they see the post – national future. One group believes that the state will manage to preserve itself by dramatically reducing its functions in the areas where we expect it to act and take control while proving its relevance in combating global threats, such as climate change, international terrorism, cyber wars, etc. The other group believes that the state will fail at this task and eventually (not tomorrow or the day after but eventually) humanity will have to move towards a shared global governance. Obviously, this is an enormous shift in human governance that will be accompanied by massive loss of lives, dramatic and often terrifying transformations, etc.
Can you guess which scenario comes from which of the groups on the political spectrum?
Clarissa's Blog 
Shared global governance has already shown itself to have a lot of problems. The use of international bodies like the UN, IMF, and World Bank or even regional ones like the EU, NATO, AU, etc. to impose solutions upon individual states has often been unpopular and often unsuccessful. These organizations are often just coalitions of powerful states acting to impose their collective will upon weaker states. Nkrumah referred to the European Economic Community’s relationship with Africa back in 1965 as a collective form of neo-colonialism. Since then the use of collective organizations to impose “solutions” on weaker states has grown immensly.
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Otto: yes, cooperation between states has failed spectacularly. UN is a joke. So is NATO. Putin can do us all a favor, just invade Estonia already, and show NATO for the useless entity it is.
Bauman, however, seems to have something very different in mind: not cooperation of states but one planet – wide society. I’m still reading the book so I don’t know yet where he finds reasons to believe this is possible.
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“I don’t know yet where he finds reasons to believe this is possible”
I’m assuming it’s either mostly based on wishful thinking
Alternately he’s speculating on the rise of a some kind of post-ethnic human being.
Probably English speaking (but with no real connection to history of or the strengths and weaknesses of English speaking countries),
obsessed with fashion minutiea (with politics subsumed to fashion),
probably a-religious (but deferential to Islam),
from a non-nuclear family (extended or non-traditional) with weak (or strong but very private) family ties,
simultaneously superficially at home and only visiting whatever spot on earth they happen to find themselves.
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Cliff Arroyo: what a nasty sort of individual you described!
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Friedrich Nietzsche Full Text EBook
Previous Section 362. Our faith that Europe will become more virile Next Section
Our faith that Europe will become more virile.
We owe it to Napoleon (and not at all to the French Revolution, which had in view the “fraternity” of the nations, and the florid interchange of good graces among people generally) that several warlike centuries, which have not had their like in past history, may now follow one another in short, that we have entered upon the classical age of war, war at the same time scientific and popular, on the grandest scale (as regards means, talents and discipline), to which all coming millenniums will look back with envy and awe as a work of perfection: for the national movement out of which this martial glory springs, is only the counter-^ against Napoleon, and would not have existed without him. To him, consequently, one will one day be able to attribute the fact that man in Europe has again got the upper hand of the merchant and the Philistine; perhaps even of “woman” also, who has become pampered owing to Christianity and the extravagant spirit of the eighteenth century, and still more owing to “modern ideas”. Napoleon, who saw in modern ideas, and accordingly in civilisation, something like a personal enemy, has by this hostility proved himself one of the greatest continuators of the Renaissance: he has brought to the surface a whole block of the ancient character, the decisive block perhaps, the block of granite. And who knows but that this block of ancient character will in the end get the upper hand of the national movement, and will have to make itself in a positive sense the heir and continuator of Napoleon: who, as one knows, wanted one Europe, which was to be mistress of the world.
http://www.lexido.com/EBOOK_TEXTS/THE_GAY_SCIENCE_FIFTH_BOOK_.aspx?S=362
NB. And even as far back as the 19C, women were equated with socialism and men with blocks of granite.
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My own opinion (not among the more cheerful ones) is that national governments will try to claim legitimacy through acting on global threats and will not succeed very well.
I don’t see any kind of global governance coming about though. The idea (without massive linguistic, cultural and religious culling) seems ridiculous.
My best guess is that the future will be interlocking and often competing national and non-national entitties acting at any particular location. Think of overlapping maps.
Different ethnic, religious and language groups might live in the same place but they’ll be like the African serengeti with different groups living alongside but not with each other and most people’s educational and marriage and work options will have a lot to do with what group they’re born into.
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Cliff: I’m with you on the national governments trying to address global challenges. We are about to see how they deal with that task. We already have an epidemic, we have global terrorism, global warming. All that’s left is a global cyber implosion. This all will play out in front of us. We live in fascinating times.
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The combination you’ve posed — epidemic, global terrorism, global warming + global cyber implosion — Humankind would find itself in a post-modern dark age.
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My goal is not to put anybody in a bad mood. 🙂 Humanity has dealt with greater challenges. We will overcome this. But it will not be easy.
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And governments won’t worry about educating people or worry about how they’ll vote because voting will be deprived of any real meaning (when it’s allowed to happen).
I’m not sure about law enforcement but it will probably continue in the direction it’s headed in the US and UK which is much more about enforcing state mandates rather than protecting citizens.
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You are absolutely right on voting being deprived of any real meaning. Sorry, I can’t copy the statements I’m responding to on this app. I agree with the rest of the comment, too.
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Cliff Arroyo has nailed it regarding education, voting, and law enforcement. The very wealthy and super-national corporations have already decided that they don’t need to educate the masses. They’re in the process of proving that voting is irrelevant. Public law enforcement will continue to exist, I suppose, but the one percent and the corporations already rely more on private security firms, just as the military is moving away from national armed forces and toward contract mercenaries.
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The worst part is that these corporations have decided they don’t need local governments. And by local I mean national governments.
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Marxists talk about a shared global governance, while anti-Marxists – about states surviving. Right?
You have written:
1) “Everything of importance happens at a global level where the decisions made at the state level simply don’t reach.” (In a previous post)
2) “the state will manage to preserve itself … and take control while proving its relevance in combating global threats” (If I understood correctly, you believe and hope this scenario will come true.)
I don’t understand how one can believe in 1 + 2 at once. They seem to contradict each other. If one state is powerless, only very close cooperation with others may help. Thus, the shift to global governance (the shift doesn’t have to be complete, but has to be significant) OR failing to achieve anything of importance.
“I don’t understand how one can believe in 1 + 2 at once.” — Unless the state will prove its relevance by its ability to cooperate with other states. And, yes, “impose their collective will upon weaker states.”
Don’t say “the state will figure it out,” as you did before, it’s the job of academics to show the way. Do you trust bureaucrats to do that? 🙂 Otherwise, what is the value of all those books about “Liquid modernity,” if we (including world leaders) can’t learn anything practical from them to survive in the dangerous times? I do believe ideas generated in academia can be “brought to masses”, helping both decision makers and people on the street.
Unfortunately, what cliff said sounds realistic to me. What Otto said regarding “coalitions of powerful states acting to impose their collective will upon weaker states” sounds possible as well, but less frightening to me than cliff’s vision.
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El: you got it right on Marxists and their opponents. 🙂
I agree on the importance of bringing these ideas to the masses. You read a lot of blogs. Does anybody discuss the collapse of the nation-state? I don’t believe they do, not directly, at least.
Everybody blogs about the tiny bit of reality they see. It’s like a crowd of blind people touching an elephant and trying to figure out what it is. Labor, education, job market, law enforcement, lifestyle – they all reflect this enormous transformation. I’m trying to name the cause for these transformation because trying to cure symptoms is not going to work. This is the value of my posts, I believe: they work through larger mechanisms at work.
I’m in the process of learning about this transformation, reading voraciously and trying to figure out some answers. I need time to arrive at the answers and I’m asking my readers to join me on this journey. I promise that it will be entertaining! 🙂
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\\ Since then the use of collective organizations to impose “solutions” on weaker states has grown immensly.
I thought the below idea was interesting:
” I was not entirely fair, however, in implying that no one could say what the European Project was. José Manuel Barroso… president of the European Commission… once let the cat out of the bag. Asked the same question that the journalist asked me, Barroso responded, “Sometimes I like to compare the European Union as a creation to the organization of empires.” He hastened to add that the E.U. was not a traditional empire. But it is surely the case that an empire in Europe, large, rich, and powerful, would assuage the feelings of a political class frustrated by having inherited a smaller role in world affairs than that of their predecessors, who ruled real empires many times larger than their own countries. ”
http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_1_otbie-european-debt-crisis.html
The author doesn’t believe in EU since
“It happens that the central offices of the E.U. are located in Brussels. Yet the political difficulties of Belgium do not give the European unionists pause for thought—or, if they do pause, they reach a peculiar conclusion: that what has not worked in two centuries in a small area with only two populations will work in a few years in a much larger area with a multitude of populations. It does not occur to the unionists that different countries really are different: not a little bit, but radically, in culture, language, history, traditions, and economies. The term “European” is not meaningless, but whatever content the term may have, it is not sufficient for the formation of a viable polity.”
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And this is a person who is desperately clinging to the nation-state past.
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\\ I agree on the importance of bringing these ideas to the masses. You read a lot of blogs. Does anybody discuss the collapse of the nation-state?
Not on the blogs I’ve seen.
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// And this is a person who is desperately clinging to the nation-state past.
HIs often repeated complaint is about “social, or antisocial, ideal—one that we have nearly achieved, unfortunately—is a nation of people that exists in an eternal present, without cultural or historical connection to its own past. ”
Now I thought that the “eternal present” could be real and connected to the weakening of the nation-state. Before, I thought he exaggerated.
Have you seen the “eternal present” expression in the academic lit on the topic?
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One of the building blocks of nationalism is the myth of a shared past that inspires present allegiance. Obviously, this past is falsified and used to manipulate emotionally and ideologically.
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“Everybody blogs about the tiny bit of reality they see. It’s like a crowd of blind people touching an elephant” — True.
Does anyone blog abut the collapse of the nation-state? I’ve written disjointed posts on one of my blogs, http://BJohnHayden.com, about the slow-motion collapse of democracy and the rising power of international corporations, both of which tend to weaken nation-states.
Regarding the future: I don’t see any reason to believe that slimmed-down nation-states will succeed in controlling terrorism etc., but I suppose it could happen. And I’m not optimistic enough to imagine that the demise of nation-states will lead to global peace and governance.
I guess a third alternative is local and regional tribalism. Or religious and ethnic tribalism. I’m just shooting in the dark.
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If you encourage the masses in their anti-authoritarianism, they will just be undereducated and eat a lot of chicken nuggets and thick shakes. One thing I’ve noticed — if you look at my old school photo, nobody is fat and if you encounter the same people on Facebook today, none of the are fat, This was a culture of deprivation rather than indulgence and there are many things to be lamented about authoritarian culture, especially that nealy all my old friends ended up conservative, but somehow none of them are self-indulgent or hostile to authority as such. They are people who could still tolerate education and a nation state. And those who cannot — hopefully they will find a way to thrive on their own. They need to lean heavily (not a pun) on their own resources, and hopefully find a way to prevent themselves from sinking.
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I’m fat and my massive education isn’t helping. 🙂 Neither do I eat nuggets or drink shakes. But I do love my kotlety. 🙂
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