Anarchism, and National Liberation

see them as the same thing personally, the appeal, form, content, objectives (cross class solidarity) are pretty much the same, only difference is that one has the assembled power of the state behind it to do so, so obviously can have a bigger impact and effect

nationalists whether they have their own state or not will always be creating and perpetuating some threat from outside to keep them going and the class divided, i'd say it's simplistic to think that the nationalism of stateless nations is any better than that that comes from state based nationalism (after all the aim is to get create a state, and be the leading figures in it, or do you think that they'll suddently becomes the workers pal once in power)

I agree with oiasleep's replies to jack white. The only distinction between national liberation and nationalism is that the first is the organised 'movement', the second the ideology that justifies it. Historically, nationalism arose as a key element in the ideology of the rising bourgeoisie (although its main 'theoreticians' were often from the petty bourgeois intelligentsia). It was linked to the emergence of the nation state as the basic unit for capital accumulation.

I also agree that we cannot make any fundamental distinction between the nationalism of those with a state and those without, or between the 'nationalism of the oppressor' and the 'nationalism of the oppressed'. The so-called 'nationalism of the oppressed' is if anything a more pernicious enemy, because it spreads the most dangerous illusions. People who genuinely believe they are fighting for a better world are much more likely to be taken in by the IRA than the UVF, for example.

Joseph K made a very good point none of the nationalists have addressed. The nationality of the oppressive army is irrelevant surely - the bad thing is that there's an oppressive army about surely? If there was a domestic military coup + dictatorship, the result for the working class would be the same, no? Presumably you couldn't call for a national struggle there, so what's the difference?

exactly, i think some of the people feeling drawn to supporting national liberation are mistaking every kid who throws a molotov or stone at an "occupying army" as engaging in national liberation struggle, and whilst there might be a undercurrent or residue of nationalism to it, it would be a mistake to reduce to that. The Battle of the Bogside is a good example, what got the whole area out on the street wasn't the fact it was "british police" but the fact it was a brutal police force that they weren't going to put up with anymore. One of the great deceptions of "national liberation" is that it seeks to claim all resistance into a carefully constructed nationalist narrative.

Yeah, it's a bit like the nationalisation/privatisation thing; it's not really the name of the owner, it's the concrete results for workers - it's these concrete results that should be the terrain of struggle, not bourgeois technicalities.

hmmm, interesting post this.

Does national liberation always have to be nationalist though? (There must be a better way to phrase that!)

Palestanians living in the occupied terrorities are oppressed because they are Palestinians - because of their national identity. Any struggle that focuses on relieving this specific oppression could be seen as being part of a national liberation struggle. It wouldn't necessarlaly be part of a struggle to establish a seperate state, or to place a nationalist group at the top of that state though.

Is this also what Alf was doing earlier on when he claimed that the Battle of the Bogside was nationalist?

edited to add: Maybe it wasn't Alf - can't find that post now.

No they're not, it's cos of their geographical location. A Ugandan immigrant there would still have the IDF over his head. OK a British citizen might be able to get out, but so could a rich Palestinian.

If there was a military coup in Palestine + a native dictatorship, would the population be oppressed "because they are Palestinians"?

exactly - i don't see why libertarians would want to drag the 'nation' into it.

If anything, goining by what ISM people have told me, the IDF tend to see Palestinians as generic Arabs anyway who aren't a 'nation' and thus don't deserve a state because there are 'Arab states' already. So even to the extent the occupation is racist, it is not oppressing people on the lines of a 'nation' the Israelis deny exists.

And if it was on the basis of nationality, over here wouldn't irish people be oppressed in England as well?

Well occupation is economics but it doesn't mean that the ideology that justifies it cannot extend into areas where it is less necessary. Although I do remember that a lot of Irish Immigrants to the UK came to escape poverty and they were traditionally cheaper. I also remember reading something (I think in libcom library) about workers attacking half-starved Irish scabs. Anti-irish racism isn't as strong as it was John. but it was very strong and it still exists, I just think that once non-white immigration picked up pace it transferred.

Point of logic, don't most occupiers do this?

Not because of the occupation, because they were immigrants. I am aware of all that. but according to irish nationalists we do still occupy them.

Does it bollocks. Only inasmuch as discrimination against anyone with a regional accent exists. My gf is "Irish" so she gets free training courses and days off work cos she's an "ethnic minority", but she's more English than me! (Her parents are irish immigrants; she still has nationality. Dual, but still, no one would even know she had irish nationality if she didn't say).

So, you people supportive of nat lib struggles here, and wayne price if you're reading - do you support this?

'the coalition of the willing' are actively promoting the 'iraqi nation' and Israel, to my knowledge, never denied lebanon was a 'nation' in the way it does with the Palestinians (and in lebanon during the occupation the oppression wasn't national either, but ethno-religious realpolitik).

I'd say its a bit like asking if there's a distinction between Leninism and fascism - ie the answer is yes.
They're both the enemy, but not at all enemies are the same (although thats become less true the more capitalism has developed).

Sorry I was thinking of long term occupation, I wasn't really thinking about Lebanon or Iraq.

ok in somewhere like tibet you've probably got a point ... though this all started with lebanon (and 20-odd years was pretty long-term)

Well I'm not aware that loyalism had any special recourse to racialism or nationalism, that republicanism didn't. Infact in amny cases Loyalism is defined purely as a rejection of Irish nationalism, and so we have seen it unable to solidify any real "identity" or "culture", whilst republicanism and irish nationalism, being the ones struggling to affirm something into existance have formed a much more stable and coherent identity and politic.

The only difference is that one is seeking to defend it's ill defined "nationalist identity" vis a vis the status quo and the other one is seeking to implement it.

Hi

I think it's fair to say, on this side of the pond, that Loyalism is associated with old-school Tories and nationalists, eg, BNP/NF. Whereas the republicans found strongist support through things like "Fight Racism!Fight Imperialism!" which sort of gave the game away a bit. That might not count as recourse though.

Something of an objectivist, utilitarian, outlook. This discounts, PUP excepted, the socialist ideological configuration of the republicans and their supporters.

Love

LR

I think this is bound up in the fact loyalism/unionism was the actual status quo and the conflation of socialism into republicanism at the start of the century. And as I did say "special recourse" as in it's no more inherent to it than "republicanism". Loyalism is a very complex "thing", it's essentially reactionary nature (ie defending the status quo) meant that it never had to formulate an affirmitive programme, though interestingly as it began to shake it produced a kind of "Ulster independence" tendency, and moved from a celebration of "Britishness" as a civil nationalism, to a kind of ethno nationalist formulation around Ulster Scots.

Republicanism may well seek to ride on "socialism" but it doing so it kills it's host, and as such it's professed "socialism" is all the more insidious and damaging. I rarely meet a socialist protestant who holds onto loyalist/unionist mythology, but I have met plenty of republican socialists. The thing is though, their socialism is in service to the nation, socialism is supported as the only means of creating a truely independent nation.

Well I think the truth of republicanism has been far from socialist, even those who openly expouse it like the INLA have been in truth catholic nationalist bootboys, and we could list a multitude of "unsocialist actions" they carried out. I mean you might as well say by denying the socialist nature of Cuba i'm discounting the socialist ideological configuration of them and their supporters.

Hi

I'd agree with all of that.

Indeed. There is a concrete link between the justice/compassion element of communist ethics and the struggle against imperialism in Cuba and Ireland though. So in saying that, I'd be asserting an underlying socialist ethic of reciprocity.

It’s the oppression inherent in successful imperialism that forces socialists to give support to national liberation struggles, whether they be nationalist or not.

Love

LR

(sorry for the cheeky edit, I confused myself)

No, because national liberation is not just a resistance to occupation, militarism, imperialism etc. It involves the suppression of other non national oppressions, the construction of a "nationalist" perspective through which all events are refracted, and further more the setting up of "national" structures which seeks to express "national interests" and in doing so reifying the concrete perspectives and issues that cut across "the nation" like a thousand fracture lines.

Leaving aside whether this really is the only difference, it would still be a significant one.
The extent to which one has a status quo to defend, and the other one doesn't, would tend to make the latter more suited to recuperating potentially radical opposition (should there be such a thing)to existing society, while the former would be more straightforwardly repressive.
(Of course, they are both defensive of the status quo in the deeper sense.)

I can see the point of going "their both the same" - as a kind of short shrift dismissal of both, fair enough, but not strictly true, and a block to understanding if taken to be.

Well yeah they clearly aren;t the same otherwise they wouldn't be knocking seven shades of shit out of each other and the rest of the population. But from the perspective of libertarian communism they are fundamentally the same.

What makes "national liberation" so dangerous to the working class is exactly it's

In order to stop this recuperation it means understanding the grievances that fuel this particular form of nationalism, and seeking a means of addressing them in a manner that can allows development beyond a "nationalist perspective".

There is no absolute safe guard that can stop any struggle being recuperated by nationalism, that is the risk we always take, but it is no excuse to avoid the issues. That is what i was getting at when i said i supproted totally the people in the Battle of the Bogside, even if this struggle was to later be congealed into a republican historigraphy.

Hi

Technically correct. As an analysis it requires a leap of logic and experience that tolerates the suffering of nationalists because you believe the outcome of successfully supporting them will result in even more pain. It’s ostensibly a bit callous, and implies quite powerful predictive powers, but I like it. You can see how those with a purely emotional attachment to socialist ethics would find it difficult to resist rallying to the nationalist cause under circumstances of extreme oppression. Similar in ways, and I’m not being flippant here, to third worldism and animal rights.

I rest my case. Of course given that the working class had already developed beyond a trade unionist consciousness when Marx’s piles were still barely formed, they see this for the rank opportunism and manipulation that it is.

Love

LR

No they're not, and the reason why they're not is not because they're knocking seven shades of shit out of each other. Identical twins can do that, or Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

I know, that's why i'm saying you shouldn't pretend it's the same as loyalism, which doesn't have this particular dangerous characteristic.

I'm not disagreeing with you about any of this.
I agree with you against the left-comm dogmatists. If anything, I'm saying don't end up getting sucked in by them to getting abstract and simplistic on the nationalist question, which you weren't doing before, at least on the posts I saw.

Hi

Oh no. They’ll accuse him of being ambiguous and inconsistent again now. Just when this was getting good too.

Love

LR

But in northern ireland they are pretty much the same, especially now. It isn't and never was like Palestine, and now the claims for "national liberation" are no longer fuelled by live "oppression" on the ground but rather by ongoing territorialism.

Well, the "pretty much" shows you know I'm right, and you might even admit it in a minute. ( Sorry, but I really refuse to use smilies.)

Certainly its not like Palestine, and I basically agree with the rest of that sentence as well.

We're not disagreeing very much, but the point I was making isn't just me being pedantic.