National-Cultural Autonomy and Isra’tine

National-Cultural Autonomy and Isratine
By Abraham Weizfeld
04-2009

Abstract

The Nationalism associated with the State is counterpoised to the national identity associated with ethnicity, in the social context. While the incorporation of ethnic national identity with the State gives rise to the “exclusive nationalism”, national identity per se is associated with Civil Society. The evident contradiction of the two concepts of national-identity and The State is found in the mutual demands for self-determination for a common territory, as is the case in Palestine/Israel or the impasse of Québécois/se national-identity, in the context of the Dominion of Canada.

The tendency of the 20th Century had been to seek ever more numerous numbers of States which separate the various ethnic identities on a territorial basis with the accompanying series of ethnic cleansing operations.

1) Introduction

National-Cultural Autonomy and Isratine

By Abraham Weizfeld
2009

an examination of the two-state proposition to determine if it has any potential for the resolution of the fundamental social contradiction between two Peoples. The 2-State notion accommodates Zionist and its State by the adoption of the Nation-State as a paradigm for a treaty between two so-called sovereign powers. Each considers the other independent even though there is a significant over layering of population. The coincidence of nation and State is in actuality a fiction based upon ideological necessity alone.

Bauer p.37 , 39

Considering the social contradiction of two national cultures present in equivalent numbers, the prospect of a democratic solution is limited by the refusal of either national population to allow itself to be relegated to the status of a permanent minority.

In the light of the dispersal of the two national populations in diverse territorial regions of the territory originally know as Kana’an, the feasibility of a territorial separation as is proposed in the ‘Two-State solution’ is nil.

The deconstruction of the Zionist Nation-State together with the Bantuization of the Occupied Palestinian Territories recognizes the existence of the two populations each with their own distinct political culture. In terms of first principles it is the natural tendency of each of the national populations to resort to the fundamental constitution of their Peoples’ assemblies to take into consideration the constitutional nature of the unified society that each are obliged to live with. As in the 35 National Assemblies of the Sinai experience with Moses where civil society expressed itself without a State and without a territory, and the emerging Palestinian civil society of the resistance, there is the basis for the reciprocal existence of each national civil society in autonomous and integrated cohabitation.

Bauer points out that the centralist-atomist constitutional democracy of Liberalism necessarily pits one nation against another while they each seek power in the State apparatus to promote their own nation’s needs and/or privileges.

“Every nation needs power, which means the possibility of having its way, of satisfying its needs. But only centralist-atomist regulation obliges the nations to acquire this power by struggling for direct influence within the state, obliges them to struggle for power. The power of the nations to satisfy their cultural needs must be legally guaranteed if the population is no longer to be forced to divide into national parties, if conflict between national groups is not to make the class struggle impossible.” p. 252 (See Tony Greenstein’s work on the Histradrut)

The Zionist version of Apartheid sought the segregation of Palestinian workers from the Israeli Jewish national community seemingly as a means of ensuring Jewish self-determination while denying Palestinian self-determination and social existence. This is the consequence of the centralist-atomist paradigm which opens the intra-national struggle under the domination of the Zionist State. The anti-Zionist solution must then avoid the same paradigm and ensure the fulfillment of each national community’s interest without denying another those very same rights by the use of an artificial majority of votes. Ethnic cleansing has brought about the Jabotinsky model of development where the Palestinian population is limited to 20% of the population. In actuality, the two national populations are about equal in numbers now in the actual territories occupied by the Zionist State and the inevitability of Palestinian population growth makes a fragile thing of the manipulated Israeli Jewish majority.

To take the matter into consideration in the context of a unified society along the lines of the Isratine concept there would actually be a relative minority of the Jewish population which would co-habitat when the Palestinian refugee population is included, compromising an additional five million Palestinians.

In order to make the context of a unified society appealing to both national communities and so bring about its feasibility by; 1) removing the apparent need for national conflict and 2) allowing for the power of a united working class to take its effect. Such a programme would bring the national relations into reciprocity where they are not forced to struggle for state power and by which the development toward democracy does not threaten the power of any nation. It becomes evident that there is a necessity for the implementation of democracy along the lines of a direct democracy in a parallel fashion where each nation retains its collective interests while securing the collective interests of any other nation in the common society.

The constitutional programme implied by such a sense of common collective interest is only conceivable with the prospect of workers’ control in a necessarily socialist political economy. This precondition was announced in Bauer by reference to,

The eyes of the proletariat thus necessarily turn to the other conceivable form of regulating the relationships of nations to the state, that form which Rudolf Springer (Renner) has termed the organic conception. Each nation should independently satisfy its own national cultural needs, should govern itself; the state should limit itself to the protection of those interests which are a matter of indifference in national terms, but are common to all nations. Thus, national autonomy, the self-determination of nations, necessarily becomes the constitution program of the working class of all nations within the multinational state.

The dominion of the Nation-State has dominated The Modern Age with its culmination during the 20th Century with its 125 million lost lives during those various wars, including the mass annihilation by nuclear bomb, not to speak of the industrial genocide of Nazism .

The fixed idea of the Nation-State continues the monarchist conceptualization that had begun with the deification of the head of State/Empire. The emancipation of the Nations was brought about within the confines of the European State-Monarchy when the moral imperative of a national religion provided the common consciousness needed for each social entity to form the Nation-State out of the turmoil of the Reformation.

Considering that we are now faced with a national-State that names itself Israel and occupied a territory within which only half the resident population is provided with full citizenship; considering that the proposed two-state solution in whatever form defers to the current parcelization of the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories) into Bantustan territories or, as the previously named ‘Pale of Settlement’; considering that there is considerable intermingling of populations; one is obliged to dissociate territory from self-determination and so abandon the notion of the Nation-State and form-up a society based on a consensual decision-making process that begins with the negotiations between the two parties for a peace treaty as proposed by all Palestinian factions and continually undermined by the State authorities of Israel. Resorting to the Jewish population of Israel as such is the logical consequence of such an impasse. An appeal to both the Israel Jewish Arab population of Sephardim and Mizrahim on the basis of the mutual recognition as Arab, together with the prospect of the mutual recognition of each national identity in reciprocity. Considering the massive rejection of the Millet status as practised in the Ottoman Islamic Ummah, the status of a minority national identity is considered obsolete by both the Jewish Arabs and the Israeli Palestinian communities.

Accordingly there is the necessity for a strategy programme that surpasses each of the preceding constitutional arrangement that have been imposed by one form of state or another. The formulations for a bi-national State are suspect in that such a conception was also behind the verbiage of the South African Apartheid regime with advocated a ‘Separate but equal’ conception with was moreso a merit system which awarded equality by the definition provided by one party alone. Such a definition of rights was subject to the ideological rationale behind the State in the first place. Any State would have its ideological rationale. To remove the discussion from that State superstructure one has to consider constitutional formats such as a Confederation or Federalism in the context of Civil Society and not the State, if it were to be reciprocal and operate on the basis of consensual understanding.

Such a conception was attempted by Otto Bauer in the context of the Austro-Hungarian Empire prior to European World War I. While limited in its appreciation of social identity as a nation and to the significance of national oppression, Bauer projected the integration of society by the mutual recognition of national-cultural identity. The perspective of Otto Bauer beholden to the Austro-Hungarian Empire sought to create a social bond beyond the particular national culture to provide for a cohesive inter-national society.

The conception of National-Cultural Autonomy is originally found in the conceptions of the Jewish Workers’ Bund and its history beginning in 1897 together with the Wimberg Austrian Social-Democratic Party congress which provided for internal national-cultural autonomy . Both sources are of interest in terms of the social infrastructure that is sought by each of the national identities that conceives of itself as such.

2) Otto Bauer and Austrian Social-Democracy

In multiculturalism the proposition for national-cultural autonomy is oftentimes associated with a territory or province within the context of a State. The proposition by Otto Bauer for national-cultural autonomy within the Austro-Hungarian Empire was concerned with its failure to reconcile national-identity with the State, as occurred in the U.S.S.R. as well. In these instances, national-identity was associated with territorial units as if the one substituted for the other. The lack of recognition of the various national minorities was a fundamental flaw in the perpetuation of the State. As such, the nationalities question was given a priority in spite of the centralizing dynamic of the State apparatus. The practice of majoritarianism was in itself central to the monolithic State operation and yet inimical to it survival.

Each nation would believe its own minorities to be disadvantaged and would see itself as able to combat the oppression of its own minorities by taking revenge on the minorities of other nations within its region. Thus, national self-determination on the basis of the territorial principle would simple provoke renewed national struggles.
For this reason alone, the territorial principle cannot satisfy the demands of the working class.

The need to overcome the majority criterion rooted in the dominant national culture in many cases was proposed to be overcome by the constitutional guarantee for collective representation of “sovereign corporations”. Such social formations exist in and of themselves without the concurrent definition of any majority and is intended to overcome the paradigm of majorities and minorities. As such the bi-national proposal for Israel/Palestine is overcome in favour of the autonomy of each nation to allow for the integration of the Palestinian refugee population without giving rise to a permanent minority without power of the Israeli Jewish community. This allows for a consensual appreciation of an integrated society.

The topology of society became a dynamic soup of varying social currents and cultures all intertwined into a given geography but without a specific territory of its own. Such cosmopolitanism on a grand scale was the means by which loyalty to the State was to be achieved when the State became the guarantor of the national cultural autonomy that was held dearest by each particular culture.

In its pure form, the aim of the personality principle is to constitute the nation not as a territorial corporation, but as an association of persons.

The precedent provided by the Islamic Ummah of the Turkish Empire gave rise to the Millet system of national autonomy extended to non-territorial social entities. The mosaic of autonomous cultures was an internally stable form of governance. Although the Dimmuni status of such minorities was recognized, protected and taxed for the effort, as if such status was provisional and secondary, it nonetheless inspired respect on the part of Otto Bauer.

The democratic federation of national communities incubated by Otto Bauer challenged the notion of sovereignty in a unitary and indivisible construct replicated internationally by the principle of the self-determination of nations which require their nation-state and that such national-states only recognize other such nation-states. At the same time Bauer sought the perpetuation of the bourgeois Austro-Hungarian Empire. The limitations of liberal democracies are demonstrated by the failure of Bauer to implement his programme in the Austrian context. The incompatibility of the European Nation-State and the relief offered by national-cultural autonomy is a consequence of the hegemony of the dominant nation. The secondary nature of national-cultural autonomy as in the Millet system offered a suspect remedy to a bourgeois national class compact. The rejection of such autonomy is the prelude to the collapse of that nation-state. Either conception of society is, in consequence, the failure of a class dominated state since the dynamic of a state superstructure is to build itself on the social unit that most closely resembles itself. This state has rested upon the national bourgeois class as a nation-state and in the absence of the bourgeoisie is fated to tolerate the political party that has formed itself into a pre-state body that is itself a replication of the national stratum that it seeks to direct. The monopolisation of the State power is dependent upon the hegemony of the dominant strata of the population, that being either the national bourgeoisie or the national proletariat. The same problem applies in both cases. It is not the class in control that determines the prominence of the social project but the historic social formation that has dominated the political project previously. The viability of the project is put into doubt equally by the fact that not all social formations are represented, neither the minority nationalities nor the subordinate gender strata within each of the nations involved as well.

The effort to reconcile the various nations coexisting in the same political superstructure is a matter of accommodation of the minority or non-dominant nationalities by means of a sort of autonomy. While it has been found that the autonomy granted the subordinated social formations such as the Québécois or the Palestinians is insufficient when limited to a provincial or a non-sovereign Authority, it may also be found that the proposition for national-cultural autonomy is itself incompatible with the nature of the sponsoring state in the first place.

By consequence, the various national liberation struggles of the 20th Century have sought to fit within the paradigm of what has become defined as a nation. The formation of a nation-state is oftentimes confronted by the presence of further nationalities which contest the hegemony of that particular nation asserting its particular sovereignty. The exercise of self-determination in such circumstances becomes ethnic cleansing with the goal of building a predominant national charter to the social composition. This is in itself the replication of the original problem for which the nation has sought to escape by building its own nation-state. The attempts to induce a social assimilation by economic stimulation have failed on numerous occasions demonstrating that economic determinism or economic liberalism does not make a worker without a national-cultural identity.

The aspiration to national conquest within the multinational state is therefore based on good reasons as long as the nations conduct their struggle in terms of the pursuit of state power. The situation alters completely as soon as the atomist-centralist is replaced by the organic regulation of national relations. Here the state has nothing to offer the nations as totalities, and the power struggle of the nations therefore no longer has any point. The nation is legally assured the power it requires; it no longer struggles to obtain it. In this case, the nation therefore no longer needs to pursue national conquest.

In the Palestine/Israel context, the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) initially proposed a democratic secular state that is based on the paradigm of the atomist-centralist state. This is expressed as either a liberal-secular democracy, a bi-national state, or a multicultural democracy. This list of paradigms includes the proposal for a “regional federal union” by Moshé Machover.

While the contradiction of the nature of national-cultural autonomy with respect to the State leads us out of the context of the State, the alternative remains unresolved. In default of which, the tendency of the 20th Century had been to seek ever more numerous numbers of States which separate the various ethnic identities on a territorial basis with the accompanying series of ethnic cleansing operations. Ultimately, the separation of ethnicities is recognized as an impossibility, or a war crime against human rights.

The concretisation of such constitutional proposals remains limited by its association with the nation-state concept and the territory to which it takes itself to belonging. The dissociation of nation and territory is fundamental to resolving the contradiction between the counterpoised senses of national self-determination. Taking political culture as the fundamental aspect of national-identity rather than a particular territory allows for the independence of national identity from territory alone. National divisions are removed in respect to the sovereignty over territory to become the independence of the national culture, and in consequence the People. While the modern national-state is fostered by a bourgeoisie class sense of order which prioritizes the economic dominance of its inheritance, culture does not require a territory upon which to build an economy, which leaves aside a People, as such.

The manner by which a People expresses its identity in self-determination is by the constitutional provisions for national autonomy which apply to the members of that community rather to the inhabitants of a particular tract of real estate. This socialization of the territory is accomplished in the name of all the nations concerned without separation into Apartheid-like conditions. By the provisions of national-cultural autonomy the organic consensus of each Nation is expressed in their own polity formed up as Civil Society and coalesced into a Constituent Assembly. The General Constituent Assembly being the federative body. Matters of national-culture are carried by each of the constituent assemblies organized on the basis of the civil society organizations. Those matters of common concern are held in consideration by the general assembly. Ongoing matters of common concern are implemented by tripartheid commissions, such as judicial bodies and the self-defence apparatus. In the principle of reciprocal national relations in a common society for example there would be a panel of judges comprised of a judge from each national culture together with their common choice for the third.

Otto Bauer provides a vivid illustration of Autonomy as auto-determination;

We have seen that socialism will necessarily lead to the realization of the principle of nationality. However, in that socialist society will construct a federative state above the national polities into which the polities are in tern gradually incorporated, the principle of nationality will change into national autonomy, the principle of nationality as the rule oft e formation of the sate into the principle of nationality as the rule of the constitution of the state. The socialist principle of nationality is the superior unity of the principle of nationality and national autonomy. … it will be just as different from the centralist atomist organization of our states as the equally diversely structured society of the Middle Ages…. The totality organized into national polities called upon to independently develop and freely enjoy their national cultures – this is the socialist principle of nationality

The introduction of the concept of national-cultural autonomy then posits the nullification of the nation-state itself, as an expression of sovereignty. The intensity of this contradiction tends to increase with the continuing waves of human migration which have never abated since the emergence of the human species from east-central Africa beginning some 200,000 years ago.

While Bauer limited national-cultural autonomy to national minorities, in effect the other of two or more nations cohabiting; it is in its reciprocal application that the feasibility of a no-state strategy is conceived. The criterion of a majority is abandoned as being superficial, arbitrary and an abrogation of minority rights. Considering that all members of society are in a minority of one sort or another, this aspect addresses the fundamental nature of democratic theory. In the practice of national-cultural autonomy the pattern of national domination by majoritarianism is annulled. Each Nation constitutes its own majority or preferably, their own consensus. This is of course the negation of liberal democracy as well, together with the social forces that promote it.

Nimni provides the synopsis of the irreducibility of the forms of the social by arguing “that the process of common reciprocal interaction lived in a permanent reciprocal relations generates a national community and expresses itself in an intersubjective bond that shapes each ‘individual National identity’ ”. This social morphology (sozial Formenlehre) is linked to the will (Wille) expressed by Neitzsche in the sense that “will is the societalized expression of human existence … ‘national apperception’ “ often expressed as national character or the collective will (as in Gramsci) and the ‘community of fate’ (Schicksalsgemeinschaft) (in Nietzsche) . Kant’s Third Analogy of Experience, the principle of community that “All substances so far as they coexist, stand in thoroughgoing community, that is, in mutual interaction.”

The dichotomy of civic and ethnic identity is contextualized by the State and social multiculturalism, respectively. Consequently, the nationalism associated with the State is counterpoised to the national identity associated with ethnicity, in the social context. The incorporation of ethnic national identity with the State gives rise to the “exclusive nationalism” that is integral to the antinomy. At its origin, the Hegelian concept of the Nation-State presented national identity as the State rather than in its social Form of multiculturalism. The evident contradiction of the two concepts of national-identity and The State is found in the mutual demands for self-determination for a common territory, as is the case in Israel/Palestine.

The presumption that the national identity of a people dissolves under the economic determinism of the proletarian condition does not stand up to the historical record and is subjected to the evaluation by Nimni as well that, “Whenever the capitalist mode of production becomes dominate, an industrial proletariat emerges that experiences similar conditions of exploitation under capitalism regardless of national location. But in this case it is the similarity of fate and not the community of fate that generates the common character.” This “existence of a dynamic process of interaction” is referred to as ‘commercium’ by Kant.

The three schools of national theory thus are defined as:
1) metaphysical; either national materialism or national spiritualism,
2) psychological (Renan); voluntarist, or
3) empirical (causal determinism as in Stalin/Lenin); defining criteria of territory, language, etc.

3) Yiddshe Arbeiter Bund

By origin the concept of national-cultural autonomy was formulated by the Yidisher Arbeter Bund of Eastern Europe which identified a national consciousness beyond the bounds of any of the States where it was found. The Bund’s conception was based both on a secular identity of Jewishness and a localized sense of integration with the country of residence, usually that being Poland. The national identity proclaimed was that of a Polish-Jewish nationality but without a territory of its own per se.

A civil society arising from the basis of social interaction rises in contradiction to the nation-state that harbours a superstructure around that base with the repressive apparatus and economic strictures necessary to maintain a certain social cohesion. The implosion of such social constraints develops under the dual dynamics of social tension and class revolt due to the apartheid-like conditions by which the proletariat is stratified into its various national communities. This duel oppression serves to differentiate the society into the various movements that seek out their self-determination for both social and economic causes.

4) Conclusion

The foundation of co-existence is to be sought in the constitutional assembly which brings together, in direct democracy, all social formations concerned to formulate and codify the means of social existence based upon their mutual actuality and not the temporal superstructure that represents one particular interest or set of particular interests.

Abstract brief

The State and National-Cultural Autonomy
By Abraham Weizfeld

For
The Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism

2008 ASEN Conference

“Nationalism, East and West:
Civic and Ethnic Conceptions of Nationhood”

April 15-16, 2008, at the London School of Economics

The dichotomy of civic and ethnic identity is contextualized by the State and social multiculturalism, respectively. Consequently the nationalism associated with the State is counterpoised to the national identity associated with ethnicity, in the social context. The incorporation of ethnic national identity with the State gives rise to the “exclusive nationalism” that is integral to the antinomy. At its origin the Hegelian concept of the Nation-State presented national identity as the State rather than in its social Form of multiculturalism. The evident contradiction of the two concepts of national-identity and The State is found in the mutual demands for self-determination for a common territory, as is the case in Israel/Palestine.

In multiculturalism the proposition for national-cultural autonomy is oftentimes associated with a territory or province within the context of a State. The initiative of Otto Bauer for national-cultural autonomy within the Austro-Hungarian Empire concluded with its failure to reconcile national-identity with the State, as occurred with the U.S.S.R. as well. In these instances national-identity was associated with territorial units as if the one substituted for the other. By origin the concept of national-cultural autonomy was formulated by the Yidisher Arbeter Bund of eastern Europe which identified a national consciousness beyond the bounds of any of the States where it was found.

While the contradiction of the nature of national-cultural autonomy with respect to the State leads us out of the context of the State, the alternative remains unresolved. In default of which the tendency of the 20th Century had been to seek ever more numerous numbers of States which separate the various ethnic identities on a territorial basis with the accompanying series of ethnic cleansing operations. Ultimately the separation of ethnicities is recognized as an impossibility, or a war crime against human rights.

Based upon the doctoral Thesis
Nation, Society and The State:
the reconciliation of Palestinian and Jewish Nationhood, 2005.

The State and National-Cultural Autonomy

By Abraham Weizfeld

For
The Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism

2008 ASEN Conference

“Nationalism, East and West:
Civic and Ethnic Conceptions of Nationhood”

April 15-16, 2008, at the London School of Economics

Abstract

While the contradiction of the nature of national-cultural autonomy with respect to the State leads us out of the context of the State, the alternative remains unresolved. In default of which the tendency of the 20th Century had been to seek ever more numerous numbers of States which separate the various ethnic identities on a territorial basis with the accompanying series of ethnic cleansing operations. Ultimately the separation of ethnicities is recognized as an impossibility, or a war crime against human rights.

Based upon the doctoral Thesis
Nation, Society and The State:
the reconciliation of Palestinian and Jewish Nationhood, 2005.

The primordial forms of religion are the means by which a nation or community formulates a code or doctrine to perpetuate itself in eternity by means of consciousness. This eternity is considered a divine attribute, when in fact it has the purpose of forming a national collectivity or enduring community. These forms of collectivity provide for those essential interests which cannot be achieved by other means. This striving for the eternity of identity cannot be achieved by a less coherent social formation or the individual entity itself. Identity is the focus of attention since such an historical memory contains the elements of human consciousness itself, in addition to the sense of self-defence necessary for its survival. The religious conception of the Nation considers ‘Le Moi’ as the image of the Nation that can accomplish that which it cannot itself, as in a Divine figure. The absolutist conception of the self in a religious framework creates the Monarchy with its ideology, among its adherents. The resulting monarchist conception of self-determination is Statism in its material elaboration. Such a national entity seeks to derive some exclusive privilege in competition with any other such social entity, and so there arises its need for a State, to define the privileges of a property.

While the Statist ideology conceives of survival as a competitive striving for scarce resources — as if it represents a private interest in property — the Nation has traditionally conceived of survival as simply a matter of life. The eternity of the Nation is concerned with sustaining life in its children, not in the power centres of the State. Power as a phenomenon seeks to justify its own existence for no other reason than by definition, a vicious tautology. The State is a concept created for the accumulation of power in a competitive methodology rather than in any creative praxis, that is, a corporate entity seeking to expand itself as if in a self-proclaimed principle of self-determination. This is reminiscent of the masculine cultural attribute in which survival means victory over animal food sources, or human competitors, as opposed to the feminine trait of food cultivation or conciliation. The Nation is more associated with the feminine cultural attributes. As in the HAUDENOSAUNEE Native Confederacy, it is the women who maintain the chief.

1.0 In Relation to Political Theory of Nationalism

The original distinction made between the intertwined ‘exclusive nationalism’ and ‘inclusive nationalism’, as in the treatment of nationalism by Hans Kohn, undergoes a transformation as significant as the differentiation between Nation and State. Thus, ‘exclusive nationalism’ becomes simply ‘nationalism’, that is, the nationalist ideology of the State, and ‘inclusive-pluralist nationalism’ (cosmopolitanism) becomes ‘national-identity’; as in the sense of a social formation. As such, the Hegelian Nation-State conception is negated by a federated Civil Society with multiple Nations, each with its particular civil society, all united in the Republic by its Civil Constitution.

In such a multi-national social environment there are indefinite numbers of identities ranging from the individual to one or more national-identities; whether or not they happen to be associated with an existing State. The concept of National-Identity tends to dissolve the effort made to unite the Nation with the State. Karl Renner referred to; ‘state and nation are antitheses of the same order as those of state and society’ (Gechtman 2005:8). Likewise, the attempts to fuse the State to Civil Society fail, in light of the ‘National-Identity’ concept — Renner’s ‘personality principle’. The independence of Civil Society is only guaranteed by its auto-sufficiency in operation with an economy that is community-oriented operating as a social-collective. The nature of the collective social economy is methodologically similar to its civil society, as determined by the nature of the federative pluralist social relations, rather than having a civil society suffocated by the dominance of the private sector or, by State monopolization of the economic institutions.

The need for the operative distinction between national-identity and nationalism is apparent from a critique of the political theories of nationalism. Shafer delimits nationalism to the modern era,
Nationalism, historically, is one of many group loyalties, a special and more or less unique form that first began to manifest itself rather late in human history, probably – though the question is debatable – during the late Middle Ages in western Europe and England. Not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did it begin to assume something like this modern form and then again, chiefly, in western Europe and England (Shafer 1972:8).

even while recognizing that ‘Nations, however, may not have an autonomous or independent government or state’ (Shafer 1972:16), in effect dissociating nationalism from studies of the Nation.

Within the framework of the liberal idealisation of the individual seeking an egalitarian universalism of either bourgeois or Marxist inspiration, there is a lack of comprehension of what Gellner calls ‘romantic nationalism’ (Gellner 1995:2). The Modern notion of identity was presumed to have surpassed the “mere enculturation of the daily activities of a local group” (Gellner 1995:3). It has become evident more recently that this is not the case. Gellner explains this deficiency in liberal theory as an aspect of uneven development that leaves some localities in a relative disadvantage leading to the perpetuation of an idealized defence mechanism which manifests itself as ‘nationalism’, situated amongst what he chooses to call, ‘cultural pools’(Gellner. 1995:4). This approach coincides with that of Benedict Anderson who also refers explicitly to ‘imagined community’ (Gellner. 1995:4). The ‘primordialist’ position, as it is considered, nonetheless sustains its identity with the ‘nation’ in spite of its premature burial by liberalism.

The territorial association with ‘nationalism’ is proposed as an inherent propensity of national identity by way of the defined characteristics of a State. This Statist conception of the nation is derived from the presumption of national identity rooted in an organic rural element rather than in civil society. Gellner’s ‘populist nationalism’ is characteristically Gemeinschaft, inward looking and exclusivist, even though ‘national-identity’ succeeds in forming a collective consciousness that surpasses the atomized units of the State that is characteristic of the Gesellschaft, Gellner himself recognises:
The nationalist vision and the social reality which engenders it, cut across the Platonic/Kantian dichotomy. Nationalism borrows its imagery and verbiage from the organic option, but is based largely on the social reality of anonymous atomized society (Gellner 1995:2).

The dichotomy between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft is parallel to the classic distinction made between ‘le moi’ et ‘le non-moi’ extrapolated into collective identities i.e. between the individual and the social context that one finds oneself in, one social context found within another, and so forth. The ideological hedge comes into play when the individual is identified solely with the self and its manifestation in the State, as if all the citizens shared in a monarchical power. The State effaces such identities in the campaign for homogenization, called democracy or, Majoritarianism. The Gemeinschaft is exemplary of the ‘self’, although it is also interpreted as ‘identity’. As such ‘le non-moi’, extrapolated into le autrie / les autries, may take on a collective sense as in Gesellschaft.

The coordination of these parallels is found in the necessary reciprocity of identity. In these terms the State is overruled as a substitute for personal and collective identity/ies. Gellner’s confondement of Society with the State in his references to community and society is presented as the dichotomy between the ‘organic’ and ‘citizenship’ criteria. The lack of distinction between the participants in a society and the citizenship of a State leads to a definition of the Nation that is a State-defined National status. Thus territory is considered a fundamental imperative to Nation; ‘Roots are indeed rural: the imaginary community invoked by the new ethos is territorial and has intimate links to the land.‘ (Gellner 1995:4). That ‘populist nationalism’ thus excludes of the Jewish People per se who are considered déraciné and so by consequence and according to such methodology, logically subject to ‘antisemitism’. On the other hand he nonetheless conceives of a Jewish Nation when, ‘Zionism created not merely a fine military instrument which saved Israel in 1948 … it also restored, with a vengeance, the imbalance in ‘roots’ ’ (Gellner 1995:5) by the creation of an ‘artificial peasant’ in the kibbutz. This fixation with the land and its State ignores the majority of the Jewish Nation, which abstains from adopting the identity provided by the ‘Land of Israel’ as the State. Such a view also requires one to ignore the urban concentration of the Israeli Jewish residents, 78% of whom still occupy only 14% of the land surface of the pre-1967 Zionist State, 60 years after the establishment of this ‘Nation-State’ . This political construction becomes the rationale in recognising the Nation simply by virtue of it being a State called The Land of Israel, ‘Eretz Israel’. On the other hand, the Palestinian fellaheen peasant roots do not appear in the methodology of the ‘roots’ of this ‘populist nationalism’. Gellner’s criteria for a Nation falls into a self-contradictory formality, incapable of recognizing a peasant-based National entity because it lacked a State, even though a peasant class is considered essential to a Nation according to Gellner.

As such, Gellner’s approach is absent a criterion by which one may discern the emergence of a ‘virulent’ nationalism, as he concludes, ‘all this does not mean that nationalism may not once again re-emerge in its virulent form. … It may do so. The question is open, and must obviously be our main concern.’(Gellner 1995:7). The concern with the re-emergence of a “virulent nationalism” is an expectation that is not misplaced even while its root cause is not taken into consideration. Gellner maintains that, ‘ … nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness; it invents nations where they do not exist.’ (Periwal, ed. 1995:11) so asserting his Statist hypothesis, as if a nation does not have an existence prior to forming a State. Since the State is essential to the theory of nationalism, he is thus blinded to the effect of the State upon the Nation. This is why the root cause of virulence in nationalism is obscured as the State instills an ideology of nationalism fostering an exclusive Monist identity .

Although Benedict Anderson differs with Gellner over the lack of appreciation for the prior existence of the Nation, Anderson as well leaves the Nation as an imaginary entity which is created in the Form of the State. And so he makes reference to the “essential correctness of Gellner’s point” (Hall 1995:11).

Michael Mann, in his A Political Theory of Nationalism and its Excesses (1995), sets up the nut of the problem to be defined. On his way to the identity of the State and the Nation he forgives ‘state militarism’, in the name of the Nation, rather than the State, but only by the assumption of the dual identity made of the Nation-State.
But the clarity of focus on the nation as conterminous with the state cries out for a predominantly political explanation. Self-conscious nations emerged from the struggle for representative government, initially born of the pressures of state militarism. Whatever atrocities were later committed in the name of the nation, its emergence lay with those democratic ideals of this period that we most value today (Mann 1995:48) .

Nonetheless, this phenomenon is distinct from the process of national democratization and auto-determination.

The original class and social struggles in their particular national contexts, were and are tendencies in the process of democratization that has swept the continents and the centuries as illustrated by Michael Mann (1995:48) , now including gender and national identities (otherwise known as ethnic/cultural minorities). The consequence has been significant for the various struggles that have developed as a result of the combined character of the joint class and national dynamic. This combined nation-class is named an ‘Order’ in classical theory and is elaborated by Maxime Rodinson as a ‘People-class’. This aspect of permanent revolution arrives with the confluence of the various national formations in society, each of which seek the status of an equal person, and as such national identity, by consequence. The process itself continues in spite of the absence of a State to claim the Form of the emergent Nation.

The criterion for an emergent Nation is recognized as being dependent upon the proliferation of institutions of self-expression forming a civil society serving to distinguish a People as a Nation . A further analysis by John Keane based upon the Yugoslav crisis sums up the advances made in this respect;
The Badinter report ‘de-politicizes’ and de-territorializes’ national identity. It recaptures something of the eighteenth-century view, championed by thinkers like Burke and Herder, that nationality is best understood as a cultural entity; that is, as an identity belonging to civil society, not the state. It sees national identity as a civil entitlement of citizens, the squeezing or attempted abolition of which, even when ostensibly pursued by states in the name either of higher forms of human solidarity or of protecting the ‘core national identity’ (Isaiah Berlin), serves only to trigger off resentment, hatred and violence among national groupings (Keane 1995:201).

With the obligation to differentiate such social movements from the exercise of State-sponsored nationalism, Mann found it convenient to refer to ‘state-subverting nationalism’, a self-contradictory formulation, but appropriate. Mann also makes the association between the ‘state-subverting nationalism’ and the nature of civil society that is named federalism.
Since regionalists deeply opposed the former [Habsburg centralists], they increasingly sought to expand the latter, first into genuine federalism involving regional autonomies, then (when the empire would not concede this) into state-subverting nationalism (Mann. 1995:49).

This use of the term ‘state-subverting nationalism’ is the indication of a consciousness that is not essentially nationalist, in the Statist sense. This necessitates its own conceptual term which is associated with the Nation even though it is not tied to the State; this is national-identity. As Keane acknowledges, ‘The distinction between national identity and nationalism – overlooked by many commentaries on the subject, including Eric Hobsbawm’s Nations and Nationalism since 1780 – is fundamental in this context.’ (Keane.19:191). This distinction is related to his fundamental distinction that, ‘democracy requires the institutional division between a certain form of state and civil society’ (Keane.1995:187), a Civil Society in the sense of res publica.

The recognition and resolution of national-identity is to be found in federalism, although Mann and the theories of nationalism fail to resolve the co-existence of national-identity in the State, concluding pessimistically;

Mild nationalism – whether state-reinforcing or state-subverting – is democracy achieved, aggressive nationalism is democracy perverted. The solution is therefore, to achieve democracy – especially federal, inter-regional democracy. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done (Mann 1995:62).

While having drawn the distinction between State-driven nationalism and the consciousness of state-subverting nations, Mann does not apply the differentiation necessary between Nation and State to postulate a form of federalism that is other than a self-contradictory mirage of a civil society that is supposedly independent of the State. Democracy remains imprisoned in Liberal theory by its subordination to the State taken as the Form of the Nation.

Theories of federalism nonetheless make some advances in terms of the treatment of consociationalism and Max Weber follows such prescriptions for a ‘federation of nationalities under a supranational state’ (Periwal, ed. 1995:96) much along the lines that were later expressed by the humanist-Zionist tendency associated with Martin Buber, who proposed a ‘multi-national state, based upon parity among the various nationalities’ (Buber 1946:46). Such proposals have not been fulfilled and remained idealist conceptions only due to the failure to distinguish the Nation from the State and national-identity from nationalism. Keane recognizes the problem and makes reference to Karl Deutsch as symptomatic of this problematic impasse.

‘State’ and ‘’nation’ came to be used interchangeably … Such expressions reinforce the assumption traceable to the eighteenth century, that there is no other way of defining the word ‘nation’ than as a territorial aggregate whose various parts recognize the authority of the same state, an assumption captured in Karl Deutsch’s famous definition of a nation as ‘a people who have hold of a state’ (7) (Keane 1995:19).

The theorist Elie Kedourie recognizes this failure of federalism in the Statist context,

The national state claims to treat all citizens as equal members of the nation, but this fair-sounding principle only serves to disguise the tyranny of one group over another (Kedourie 1996:127).

This pessimism is only a consequence of the ideological exclusivity of Statism and its ideology of nationalism which Kedourie describes as follows,
In nationalist doctrine, language, race, culture, and sometimes even religion, constitute different aspects of the same primordial entity, the nation. The theory admits here on no great precision, and it is misplaced ingenuity to try and classify nationalisms according to the particular aspect which they choose to emphasize. What is beyond doubt is that the doctrine divides humanity into separate and distinct nations, claims that such nations must constitute sovereign states, and asserts that the members of a nation reach freedom and fulfilment by cultivating the peculiar identity of their own nation and by sinking their own persons in the greater whole of the nation (Kedourie 1996:73).

In reference to the Austrian Social Democrates’ (Otto Bauer and Karl Renner) proposal for national-cultural autonomy in the context of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Kedourie concludes;
… attempts to stem the tide of nationalist discontents are seldom successful, since nationalists consider that political and cultural matters are inseparable, and that no culture can live if it is not endowed with a sovereign state exclusively its own (Kedourie 1996:116-117) .

Here the reference to political and cultural matters is symptomatic of the problem in that cultural identity is not considered ‘political’ in and of itself. The artificial dichotomy made between culture and politics in the nationalist context is the difficulty. Culture is thus postulated as being political only in the context of the State.

In the analysis of Power by Karl Deutsch, social cohesion is based upon the means of communication rather than the means of production and although his theory is relatively abstract he has chosen to put aside the ‘subjective’ definitions of nation as superficial. In so far as his orientation to the forms of communication remains materialist , with its cultural and economic consequences, his theory remains dislocated or abstract since it does not situate culture in the organisms which transmit such consciousness, and that is found in Civil Society. National formations are consequently debased to, ‘oppressed, submerged, or otherwise disadvantaged groups … [such as] Negro fellow citizens’, when they are subject to a lack of Power. The preconception of the Nation as a ‘People’ self-conscious of its corporate identity based in a unity formed by the State, is tied to the formulations of Burke (Deutsch 1966:21).

The notion of society in Deutsch is only defined in economic terms (Deutsch 1966:29) while civil society is unmentioned and subjected to an extensive theory of social communication related to the economy again and only referred to as ‘The inner source of political power’ (Deutsch 1966:75), very much in the economic determinist tradition . Consequently, the nation is only considered as such according to Deutsch by virtue of the attribute of power which compels other such formations to recognize it as a sovereign nation. The defining characteristic of the nation according to Deutsch is simply power, in any other case he defines such formations as nationalities although they are otherwise indistinguishable from nations in general (Deutsch 1966:97,101,104). Such a criterion is simply a form of alienation by which the nation is considered from the externalized perspective alone which presents itself to the world at large by means of its self-governing economy thus becoming of interest to other such formations. As Deutsch puts it in his flippant manner, ‘The nation-state, it seems, is still the chief political instrument for getting things done’ (Deutsch 1966:2,4,75). The practice of using the term nationalities by Deutsch and others is an effort to overcome the actualities of national formations which are not befitted with its own State, thereby revealing the contradiction of the Nation-State concept as in John Kautsky’s, ‘…nationalism, the identification of state and nationality’ (Kautsky 1976:32). The utility of the term nationality is only appropriate for those nations which are situated in a number of different States, such as the Jewish, Palestinian, Kurdish, Berber, Gitan/Roma, Basque or Kashmiri case or, on behalf of a nation associated with a State but living also in a number of other States, such as the well known hyphenated Canadians or other such immigrant communities or national minorities; British-Canadians, French-Canadians, Irish-Americans, German-Americans, African-Americans, Jewish-Americans, or Israeli-Americans (Kly 1986:26).

The ‘National Principle’ substitutes State for Nation as if to contradict Kedourie’s awareness of the difference between perception and objective reality which explains how the perceived sense of a sovereign State is only an apparent manifestation of the Nation.

… the sensations which the categories of our mind transform into objective experience we only know in space and time. Now space and time, Kant argued, are not properties of things; they are rather something contributed by the perceiving self to the sensations impinging on it (Kedourie 1996:33).

In theories of nationalism the Nation is perceived as a State and so assume the necessity of the latter, although Kedourie himself reveals in various instances how the Nation is historically independent of the State. His failing to maintain the differentiation of Nation and State into their derivatives, of national-identity and nationalism, leads to the collapse of this analysis and nationalist theories in general, as he admits;

The invention [nationalism] has prevailed, and the best that can be said for it is that it is an attempt to establish once and for all the reign of justice in a corrupt world, and to repair, for ever, the injuries of time. But this best is bad enough, since to repair such injuries other injuries must in turn be inflicted, and no balance is ever struck in the grisly account of cruelty and violence. … It is a question which, in the nature of the case, admits of no final and conclusive answer (Kedourie 1996:139).

This is not to say that all theories of the Nation have been tainted with Statism. One may seek theoretical treatments of the Nation that do not limit themselves to State forms of appearance. The problem is rooted in the Eurocentric definition of State which is found in the Treaty of Westphalia Article VI, ‘… States (therein comprehending the Nobility, which depend immediately on the Empire) …’ (1648). The economism at the core of the problematic is exposed by Bauer when the ‘non-historic Nation’ was taken into consideration in spite of the attributes of a lack of economic development and partially formed class structure, together with no defined territory. As such the ideal conceived by Bauer, as inspired by the Bundist Vladimir Medem, was for the recognition of such nationalities as a means to avert their eventual separation into a State of their own. Medem’s conception of such autonomy was more so based on the cultural attributes of national identity rather than an economic criterion. Such a cultural criterion in terms of language allowed for the identity of the eastern European Jewish Nation in spite of a lack of a common territory. The lack of recognition for such a national-cultural autonomy in their respective contexts was a consequence of the myopia of the State which remained centred in the dominant nation by means of the national bourgeois hegemony in the State. Subsequently such formations fragmented into various States as the national bourgeoisie of the nationalities became sufficiently endowed to proclaim its economic independence as a State.

The colleague of Martin Buber’s, the Jewish-German political philosopher Gustav Landauer, went beyond the confines of the State to declare that,

The state, with its police and all its laws and its contrivances for property rights, exists for the people as a miserable replacement for Geist [Nation] and for organisations with specific purposes; and now the people are supposed to exist for the sake of the state, which pretends to be some sort of ideal structure and a purpose in itself, to be Geist. … Earlier there were corporate groups, clans, gilds, fraternities, communities, and they all interrelated to form society. Today there is coercion, the letter of the law, the state (Maurer 1971:93).

As in Kedourie, Michael Mann chooses to differentiate between Nation and State without drawing the corollary of the distinction between national-identity and nationalism. By identifying the State with the self-realization of the Nation as an independent self-sufficient and sustainable entity, there is a general lack of correspondence of national entities and a given State since organic diversity cannot correspond to the formal limitations of the State. As a result, the theories of nationalism treat national conflict as inevitable.

The danger rests that having distinguished between Nation and State, the ‘National Doctrine’, in defining the State as an essential attribute giving precedence to the existence of the State rather than the Nation turns against itself in principle. The rationalization of the Hegelian State continues in the name of the Nation but not as the Nation, only as ‘nationalism’.

Landauer’s rejection of the State allows him to have remained aloof from the Zionist movement, unlike Buber. He remarks, ‘Strong emphasis on one’s own nationality, even when it does not lead to chauvinism, is weakness ’ (Maurer 1971:81). His subsequent rejection of a Zionist State was indicative of such analysis. The prospect he projects of a Gesellschaft von Gesellschaften (a society of societies) is reminiscent of the Proudhon formulation in his Federal Principle; ‘a federation of federations’.

One is thus obligated to move outside the parameters and paradigms of the political theory of nationalism if there is to be a resolution of the incompatibilities presented by the Statist model. Trevor Purvis also concludes that, ‘as a hegemonic project, the unity of the people-nation constituted by the modern state has always been open to contestation. In turn this has implied an open character to the nation, one that belies its mythological closure in the discourses of nationalism’ (Purvis 1996:51).

While the works on nationalism are rich in overview and opinion, the approach that is explored in this work seeks to meet the needs of current conflict resolution and in particular the Palestinian-Zionist knot. It is with such a perspective in mind that one may express the desire for the means by which such a conflict may be resolved, by meeting the essential needs of each nation involved, leaving aside the categorical imperatives of the State. It is precisely in this respect that the character and attributes of national-cultural autonomy as elaborated by Otto Bauer and Karl Renner will serve the development of those societies that have need of an alternate constitutional framework to overcome the inherent stasis of the State in conflict with its own Society. As in the dissociation of theocracy from the State, the de-linking of the Nation and territory allows national-cultural autonomy to form the basis of Civil Society.

2.0 Collective Consciousness

The ‘Common Will’ of Hegel and the ‘General Will’ of Rousseau are the two conceptions which dominate the Modern Era. The Common Will pertains to the Nation while the General Will refers to the citizenry of a State, so leading to their possible contradiction. That is, a certain precise differentiation must be made between the Hegelian concept of the Common Will and the Rousseauian General Will, as the former is concerned with national-identity itself, and the latter is concerned with the Civil Society as formed by the citizenry — without reference to nationality. In effect the two are opposed to one another in their nature rather than being similar, as may be implied. This national conception and the individualist perspective share an exclusive tendency though towards one focus, themselves. While Rousseau presents the notion of the State as being upheld for a pluralist alternative to the uniformity introduced by the model of the Nation, it has fallen into the homogenization induced by the dominant/majoritarian nationality. The proposition for an alternative to this impasse is based upon both these conceptions being fused in a pluralist civil society thus allowing for national-cultural autonomy and other collective identities, in federation. This dynamic method of operation would be interactive between national identities in a pluralist setting with multiple foci. Such is the natural equilibrium found in the ellipse of the animal’s egg, or the planet’s orbit, and so also acts Civil Society which remains in perpetual change even while the traditional is preserved.

The consideration given to the territory as a fundamental criterion often leads to the confusion between its aspects. It may be stated that territory is one means by which a Nation forms its societal environment, even though society itself is not subordinate to territory. The resulting inversion between the social context and territory is the result, as in Gellner. Actually it is rather the economy that is directly linked to a given territorial site in most cases, especially in agricultural societies. The distinction between Nation and territory is based in the choice of methodology; either the materialism of economic determinism or a multi-faceted problematic. The economism integral to Statism merely recognizes those Nations which replicate a similar economic and structural Content as tautology. It is necessary to bring the concept of Nation out of the hierarchical schemas in order to reveal its real nature. That distinction made in respect to territory, provides the basis for the conception of the Nation as a People rather than a materialist fetish. The primordial and enduring conception of the Nation is based in the collective self-identity of the People who form a distinct culture, having a particular historical experience, and origin, who wish to form a civil society to maintain such an historical acquisition in perpetuity.

This phenomenon is described by Rudolf Rocker as;
The national-suppression policy of the great states before the War developed in the suppressed nationalities an extreme nationalism which finds expression today in the according by the new-made states of the same treatment to their national minorities which, as national minorities, they themselves once received — a phenomenon showing all too clearly that little states following the footsteps of great ones and imitate their practices (Rocker 1978:349).

The quandary that presents itself is that the States that are presented with the fait accompli of minority nationalities are obliged to recognize identities that contradict its own rationale for existence as a centralized superstructure provoking territorially-based nationalities to seek their own State apparatus in a never-ending spiral of ever smaller Statelets, each seeking to preserve its own sovereignty with a State of its own. The current proposition for a ‘Two-State Solution’ is indicative of this methodology which seeks to give rise to two or three Palestinians Statelets, or Bantustans, in effect.

As in any methodological impasse, the illusory antinomies of national conflict are subsumed by a breakthrough based in a fundamental realignment of conceptual identities. In such a process the Modern perspective is inverted reciprocally to reverse the direction of the hierarchical emission of authority, to annul the monopoly of power. A social entity is examined from within, in the context of the many parallel phenomena externally, rather than from an external ethnocentric and therefore alienated point of view. This extraneous void, presumably absent of any other national context, is actually a competing national perspective, a self-perpetuating agency seeking to develop its singular economic base to better nourish itself as a parasite on its subjects as sacrifices, known as either slaves, citizens or soldiers. This is the game of hegemony that is played by aggressive State entities, whether Empires or, Nation-States. Karl Deutsch puts it well saying, ‘It leads to the loss of self-determination, nationalism at the end of its tether becomes a force for the destruction of the nation.’ (Deutsch 1966:184)

While the national concept parallels class consciousness in grandeur and profundity, class consciousness is in any case itself posited for dissolution according to the classical theorist in the matter, so leaving national consciousness as the determinant factor in social development. The consequence of this conclusion is to reverse the roles of Form and Content from Hegel’s supposition, making the Nation the Form rather than being Content in the State. The Nation emerges out of the envelope of the State so enabling Civil Society.

The interfacing with more extensive and varied social groupings constitutes a developmental process both internally and externally for the national entity. Naturally one manner of ameliorating the social consciousness would be through the elaboration of reciprocal national consciousness in the inter/intra-national/s context. The absence of an intermediary State superstructure allows for a Reciprocal Principle whereby no one identity takes precedence over the other by definition. The direction observed being taken during historical development is towards ever larger networks in a harmonious interaction, expanding without limit, boundless, and permanent — a continuous surpassing of limitations in federated reciprocity.

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Abraham Y. Weizfeld completed the doctoral dissertation Nation, Society and The State: the reconciliation of Palestinian and Jewish Nationhood at l’Université du Québec à Montréal, having published the documentary study Sabra-Shatila (1984) and the anthology The End of Zionism: and the liberation of the Jewish People (1989). He is currently working on a second edition of the essay The Abrahamic Tradition.

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Endnotes

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abraham Weizfeld