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Next Reading Club (Patreon)

Published:
2024-09-06 18:18:19
Imported:
2024-09
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Content

"The basic characteristic of the modern nation and everything connected with it is its modernity."

On 4 October, we will be continuing our discussions of the rise and fall of nations by looking at Eric J. Hobsbawm's classic Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Was the great historian correct when he wrote in the 1980s that the fact historians were making progress in analysing nations and nationalism was an indication that the phenomenon was past its peak?

Please send in or post here below any questions or ideas you would like us to discuss – don't be shy ;-)

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Comments

Mouldy L

If I've understood you guys correctly and for you the question is how we get out of Mair's void and that national sovereignty is the answer to this question of how we repoliticise the economy, social roles, governing institutions etc. how is this so? What about the nation makes it any more solid an exit from our political vacuum than, say, climate apocalypse, Palestine or inequality? Isn't it just hallucinating the same mirage of politics as the campus protest, eco-socialism or Corbynism? Why when we talk about the nation are we not just talking about tourist knick knacks? Is there anything to take back control of or has it all already melted into air?

Mouldy L

I don't know if you guys have already recorded and I'm just speaking into the void but I guess another way I'd like to ask what is essentially the same question is: if increasingly the western working class is outsourced to the global south and an increasing proportion of domestic low paid, undervalued work that robots aren't good enough to do yet (say, picking fruit, making and delivering fast food, mixing cement, looking after the sick and the elderly etc.) is filled by migrant labour who dont feel the kinds of national attachment the natives do and in many cases cant even vote, does that mean that any movement towards national sovereignty will have to content itself with native white collar professionals and an increasingly lumpenized proletariat? One second group thinks the first has sold off their jobs to migrants while the first thinks the second want to lynch those same migrants. Is this an impasse of thinking in terms of an identity construct like the nation? This worked in the past when labour and nationality (and the electoral rights this gave you) more or less coincided. But they don't anymore. I ask all this as someone who is utterly convinced by your arguments on Brexit, by the way, and the massively wasted opportunity for the left this was. I guess I'm wondering if Brexit was just an opportunity the left needed to grab and take advantage of in order to repoliticise the void or if national sovereignty is a substantive goal in itself. Thanks.