Anarchism, and National Liberation

i missed it mate, do you want to give me a quick summary on what your thoughts on national liberation struggles are if they increased the confidence of the working class?

I'm asking to open up the field of debate, which i think i said twice alreday.

I answered you on p6. Ret did so more eloquently here:

CM in what way does the question even make sense - how can national struggles increase the confidence of the international class, except by pitting one 'nation' against the other?

if you'd like to explain the question perhaps the debate could open up a little

I've gone back five pages, not found it, given up.

Why on earth would I want to implement 1967 borders? I've never even suggested anything close to that. I don't actually have a solution for the situation, so I'm afraid I don't have a position to defend.

joesph the way the original premise is posed 'national liberation struggles are bad for the working class therefore should not be supported', if we take that as our start point and posit what if national liberation struggles actually increased the confidence and militancy of those working class people engage in national liberation struggles what would our position be?

What that does then is open up a different field of debate which asks and takes as its starting point - who then decides what is best for the working class of these particluar regions at any given time in history? The icc (and judging from this thread some class struggle anarchists) would shout in unison WE DO!

I am not convinced.

Surely as arguments have been made for why national liberation struggles are bad for the working class it would be more sensible to either refute those arguments or at least offer a parallel rather than 'posit' the opposite without evidence and then ask questions about hypothetical positions.

well you didn't really did you. You talked about the working class being international not whether you would support the increase in class confidence felt as a consquence of working class people being active in national liberation struggles. As you so eloquently put it 'a simple yes or no would suffice'.

you're either trying to start a fight or your're not very bright ... none of the anarchists here at least are trying to claim the authority to decide what is best for the working class, but of course we're allowed opinions on the matter. except for leninist parties, no-one even tries to "decide what is best for the working class of these particluar regions at any given time in history", so its a non-field to open up.

participation in fascism surely raised the confidence of those working class people participating in it, so does gang membership, football hooliganism etc - but that confidence isn't a class confidence so it doesn't make any sense to ask :?

a question that would at least make sense would be something like 'what if participation in a national liberation struggle increased the class confidence of the international proletariat'? or something - but then we're not talking about national liberation any more but a localised moment of class struggle

Exactly Joseph.

Your question makes no sense, like most of the gibberish you spout in a rather sad attempt to start fights with the "class struggle anarchists" you so dislike. Stop derailing the thread.

which would be an equally useful question. But devrim is aking anarchists to decide their position (from a wholly erroneous starting premise has to be said. And to be honest that question could only be posed and answered as pure theory.

...

again those arguments as simply intellectual supposition. How do we know? We know because we've got a better understand of the working class? We know because our class analysis is so highly developed?

the simple fact is as is a bunch of university graduates with pretty secure employment in a pretty secure social cultural and political environment we have no fucking clue as to why working class people choose to coalesce around national liberation struggles over and above class struggles as a real defintion of their identity.

Devrim is asking anarchists to make a choice in their 'position' not what they think the working class are playing at. But the overwhelming and frankly odious responses seems to be these working class people are doing it wrong they don't have a clue and our superior political awareness allows us the privilege of telling them so.

Which is the basis of your opinion which you spout all over the net, which is that no one can ever criticise the actions of any working class (as categorised by you) person. Which is why you criticised those who thought the French rioters who burned the disabled man to death and murdered a pensioner. What I'd really like to see is you actually have the courage of your convictions and carry this through (rather than make empty posturing on the internet to start arguments because you have nothing better to do), and support all murders, muggings, rapes and child abuse carried out by working class people. After all, who are you to criticise them?

if active involvement in racist or fascist movements increased the confidence and militancy of the working class people who engaged in them, what would your position be to them?

Hi

Then stop defending your position that this-or-that is unrealistic.

Neither would I. And I’m a class fetishist.

Coffeemachine, other than developing a critique of a milieu you already consider to be more-or-less irrelevant, what is the substance of your point?

Love

LR

i guess lazy the point is any situation that involves real people in genuine conflict can't be reduced to choosing a correct political position.

i bet you are, and a damn fine one at that

if you can't have a position when it matters, what's the point in having one at all

Hi

I agree with the spirit of this. Forgive me for pedantically adding that whilst it can be "reduced", to do so is just finding a new way to consume the situation as a political commodity.

Love

LR

indeed oi i'm sure me and you both know facsists absolutely committed to their political position

Well I'm assuming from this:

that people who aren't graduates and don't live in rich white countries are presumably too backwards and simple to not be nationalists.

CM - you again seem to be avoiding my question on who are you to criticise working class rapists?

Hi

Ha ha. It's not a problem for those of us who are genuine sons and daughters or toil though. Grand.

Love

LR

you're the exception the proves the rule mate.

Ps i expect lazy jnrs to get more than an nvq in carpentry.

I suppouse if my dad had joined the UVF instead of marrying a fenian we'd be in no position to judge him either, afterall he left school with no qualifications, grew up in real poverty and had to help support his widowed mother in looking after the younger kids.

Also do you see any distinction between the national liberation of the IRA and the national liberation of the UVF?

The irony is - it is exactly the university graduates, (and often their allies of forward looking businessmen) who are almost always at the heart of leading national liberation struggles and who form the upper layers of the new state bureaucracy. That's a very consistent historical fact. This is usually because this strata is frustrated by the 'underdeveloped' conditions of their society and want to 'liberate' their nation both from imperialism and the restraints of outmoded (feudal/religious etc) social forms - and/or the incompetence of a weak native bourgeoisie who cannot accomplish the necessary modernisations of the state form. Nepal, China, Cuba, the African states, on all continents the disenfranchised middle class intelligentsia fulfill a definite political, social and economic role.

Broadly I think I agree RM, although certainly in the case of many British colonies the "graduates" had often come through military service or some other kind of "education" than university.

The missing piece in the argument is that the idea of the nation state is inculcated in these members of the new intelligentsia; they are alienated from the traditional societies in which they grew up and convinced of the validity of the nation-state model. In that the founding myth is that the nation-state consists of a nation, all nation-states are artificial; it is the point at which potential nationalists accept this fundamentally colonialist/imperial vehicle that is interesting.

Good point, BnrN. I suppose there's not one particular point of acceptance, but a process of conditioning thru the ideology of their class and its aspirations, what role it grooms itself for. All of which is formed in and by the colonial period; the colonists' influence on society creates stratas of 'native' functionaries in the colonial bureaucracy and economy who are wholly separated from 'traditional society' (or thrust into a new relationship with it) and who either aspire for acceptance by/integration with the colonisers or desire to replace them as rulers.

Would you see them as being the same? I'd say both forces were nationalist, but are they both aiming for national liberation? What exactly were / are the UVF hoping to liberate themselves from - the Union?

I think Revol's point is that the UVF would consider themselves to be preventing being opposed by the Irish Republic.
Both use similar rhetoric of being endagered and victimised and provide someone to blame. It's hardly surprising they attract dissatisfied people to them. This goes in general for nationl liberation struggles.

I think I asked for an example of a national liberation struggle being good for the working class earlier.
Anyone got one?

whether it's the nationalism of stateless nations or the nationalism of state engendered nations, it's the same old stuff, cross class appeal, creating fear through outsider myths, secular religious fetishism connecting the dead with the not yet born at the expense of the living

Well it was a genuine question. Is there a difference between nationalism and national liberation? The first term is obviously much broader.

A national liberation movement would be attempting to seek freedom from something. That doesn't necessarily apply to all nationalists though. I think that treating the two as being identicial is a bit simplistic to be honest.

Anyway I haven't thought this out too much...