Nation-States: Consciousness and Competition

418 Pages·2016·3.343 MB·English

by  Neil Davidson

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Praise for How Revolutionary Were N THIS insightful new collection of essays, promi- a
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the Bourgeois Revolutions? and nent Scottish Marxist Neil Davidson brings his formi- io
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Holding Fast to an Image of the Past dable analytical powers to bear on the concept of the
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capitalist nation-state. Through probing inquiry
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“I was frankly pole-axed by this magnifi- Davidson draws out how nationalist ideology and conscious- a Nation–States
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cent book. Davidson resets the entire e
ness are used to bind the subordinate classes to “the nation,”
s
debate on the character of revolutions:
while “the state” is simultaneously wielded by capital as a
bourgeois, democratic, and socialist. He’s
means of conducting geopolitical competition. The questions
sending me, at least, back to the library.”
Davidson takes up—from the extent to which nationalism Consciousness and Competition
—Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums (cid:27) (cid:25)
can be a component of left-wing politics to the difference
“This is, quite simply, between bourgeois and socialist revolutions—have wide- Neil Davidson
the finest book of its kind.” ranging implications for today’s activists and historians.
—Tony McKenna,
C Marx and Philosophy Review of Books

M
Y “This is Neil Davidson at his very best. In
(cid:28)(cid:29)(cid:30)(cid:31)
CM a sparkling set of essays, Davidson offers
MY a conceptually sophisticated and histori-
CY cally wide-ranging analysis of the work of

CMY classical and contemporary political
K thinkers. . . . In terms of its depth of

learning it stands in comparison with Neil Davidson is the author of Discovering the Scottish Revolution

Perry Anderson’s Zone of Engagement. (2003), for which he was awarded the Deutscher Prize; How

An essential read.” N
Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? (2012); Holding Fast to
—Satnam Virdee, professor of
an Image of the Past (2014); and We Cannot Escape History (2015). e
sociology, University of Glasgow i
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Davidson lectures in sociology in the School of Political and
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Social Science at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.
“Holding Fast to an Image of the Past is
a
illuminating, authoritative, and some- v
i
times very funny. . . . This new collection d
s
fruitfully combines wide-ranging o
Political Science $22
erudition with vivid vignettes.” n
—Bridget Fowler, emeritus professor of
sociology, University of Glasgow
www.haymarketbooks.org
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Nation-States
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Nation-States
Consciousness and Competition
(cid:1) (cid:2)
NEIL DAVIDSON
Haymarket Books
Chicago, Illinois
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© 2016 Neil Davidson
Published in 2016 by
Haymarket Books
PO Box 180165
Chicago, IL 60618
773-583-7884
www.haymarketbooks.org
[email protected]
ISBN: 978-1-60846-568-2
Trade distribution:
In the US, Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, www.cbsd.com
In Canada, Publishers Group Canada, www.pgcbooks.ca
In the UK, Turnaround Publisher Services, www.turnaround-uk.com
All other countries, Publishers Group Worldwide, www.pgw.com
Cover design by Eric Kerl. Cover image of pro-independence marchin
Edinburgh supporting a Scottish independence referendum to be held
on September 18, 2014.
This book was published with the generous support of
Lannan Foundation and the Wallace Action Fund.
Printed in Canada by union labor.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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For Alan Rae
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Contents
Preface ix
1. The Trouble with “Ethnicity” 1
2. What Is National Consciousness? 31
3. From National Consciousness to Nation-States 51
4. Marxism and Nationhood: Two Replies to John Foster 77
4.1 Stalinism, “Nation Theory,” and Scottish History
4.2 The Public Memoirs and Confessions
of an Unconscious Weberian
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5. Enlightenment and Anti-Capitalism 119
6. Islam and the Enlightenment 175
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7. The Necessity of Multiple Nation-States for Capital 187
8. Far-Right Social Movements as a Problem for Capital 247
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9. A Scottish Watershed 291
Notes 311
Index 367
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Preface
T
he term “nation-state” conjoins two others: “nation,” a collective
social identity; and “state,” a structure of political power. Territorial
states have existed since the emergence of class society around 3000
BCE, but nation-states are a much more recent phenomenon—so recent,
in fact, that they are characteristic of only one type of class society, cap-
italism, whose origins lie a mere five hundred years ago, and which at-
tained complete global dominance only in the late twentieth century.
Yet although the two aspects of nation-states are inseparable, the aca-
demic literature, including that written by Marxists, tends to discuss them
in the context of separate disciplinary fields: adherence to national identity
is a subject for social psychology, or perhaps the cultural studies branch of
sociology; relationships between states are the province of the international
relations wing of political science. Writers who do attempt to deal with
both aspects of nation-states tend to either oscillate between collective
identity and political structure or treat them in historical sequence. In
Hagen Schulze’s impressive survey of European states from the era of
Charlemagne, for example, the first three parts of his book are respectively
titled “States,” “Nations,” and “Nation-States”; but the subject matter of
the third simply reverts to that of the first: it emphasizes states at the expense
of their national form.1Most discussions, however, do not even make these
distinctions and simply use “nation” as a synonym for “state” throughout.2
ix