CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

“The Decline of the Nation State and the End of the Rights of Man”

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

When Edmund Burke learned that the French Assembly had proclaimed all men to be possessed of natural and inalienable rights, he is reported to have responded that he preferred his rights as an English man. Inalienable rights sound good, but who is going to enforce them? Under the cloak of Liberalism that question of enforcement has been profitably postponed for two centuries, usefully providing cover for an expansive Capitalism that now covers the globe.

Whilst in the early 19th century so called democratic rights were granted to tame the dangerous classes at Capitalism’s core – deluding workers into believing that citizenship transformed them into Burke’s political equals – the peoples of the colonised periphery continued to be exploited and their resources looted. The ruse, and Liberalism’s inherent obfuscation furthered this, was that some notion of equal rights would eventually follow as national liberation movements forced the West to decolonise. However, what has become increasingly apparent is that maintaining stability at the core is dependent on continuing exploitation at the periphery. As a monopolistic form of Capitalism (Lenin’s description of its last phase) needs to reboot itself with more additions of ‘primitive accumulation’ or free stuff, to keep the profits flowing and the dangerous classes quiescent. As arch-imperialist, Cecil Rhodes opined in 1895, “The Empire is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists.”[2]

It was Lenin’s prediction that this last imperialist phase would play out on the eve of the socialist revolution. And whilst the long-awaited proletarian overthrow looks unlikely, particularly now that large swathes of the working class are supporting the racist ideology of emerging elites, the stability of the nation state is, perhaps, less assured. Hannah Arendt thought its fate sealed by the refugee crisis she witnessed after World War 11 when Liberal states failed to recognise the human rights of the stateless. For Arendt, the fates of the two were intertwined since the concept of the sovereign individual imbued with rights by virtue of their birth was the very supposition for the rights of the citizen. Citizenship was the mechanism for preserving rights not for producing them. If the words of the declaration turn out to be a historical fiction, then the legitimacy of the nation state that is based on them goes the same way, “the crisis of one necessarily implies the end of the other.”[3]

World Systems analyst Immanuel Wallenstein believed the crucial date heralding the demise of the current world system was 1968, when the push back against global capitalism and its sham freedoms began. Though the collapse of Communism in 1989 was obviously important since it saw the removal of the “Liberal-socialist justification of the capitalist world economy”.[4] However, he thought that the real chaos would erupt later, when the periphery began to arrive at the core and the demographic balance of the northern states was disrupted. Because, whilst Liberalism has been holding in check the implications of individual sovereignty ever since its enunciation – essentially it’s been successfully externalising racism – that hold is now slipping and the system is in crisis. According to Wallenstein, what will ultimately emerge in the next world historical system, around 2050 to 2070, once the chaotic upheavals have subsided will be something very different – close to either rights for all or rights for none. Either the emergence of some genuine egalitarianism or a return to the hierarchy of privilege, presumably maintained with high levels of technological oversight. And whilst many of us won’t be around to check his theory, we can already see Western nation states – their legitimacy fading – attempting to stifle, often violently, the emerging inner contradictions.

As we watch, the Liberal West is flagrantly ignoring International law and the post war institutions set up, purportedly, to defend human rights. And, increasingly, it appears more comfortable with terrorism than with diplomacy – retrograde developments fully endorsed by the mainstream at the core – making it impossible not to recognise that the era of pretending universal rights is over. But as the Liberal mask slips and the West’s imperialist ambitions become evident, what is emerging is a significant disconnect within the core itself between the right-wing political elites and their acolytes who endorse the rising violence, and a substantial proportion of the demos which does not. No doubt the West’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza awoke much of the European and American populace from their political slumbers. And, as the dots are now joined from the horrors of Gaza to Israel’s ethnic cleansing in Lebanon to the illegal war on Iran, there is no sign that the populace is going back to sleep. Whether that profound discontent coalesces into some form of resistance is, of course, a different matter, and, no doubt, one currently under careful scrutiny.

Whilst Liberal-minded commentary continues to mention human rights commissions and reports, and even the possibility of another Nuremberg, these are simply iterations from the same old Liberal play book. Liberalism always was a buffering ideology; its purpose to insulate power from democratic reach, usually by gifting ‘rights’ –which, essentially, are no more than licences and easily withdrawn – to appropriate sectors at opportune times. Liberalism’s purpose was never to deliver accountability, but to deflect it.

Rubio’s revanchist speech at the Munich Security Conference set the tone. Decrying communism and anti-colonial uprisings for blocking the West’s ascendance, Rubio promised a colonising relaunch and was looking to Europe to reclaim its old heritage. A kind of Colonialism 2.0 no doubt: with heavily automated hardware, guided by Israeli surveillance and liquidation prowess, which was shaped by US tech bros after all. And presumably, zone specific, focussing on assets to be exploited and not needing to bother with all that old civilising rhetoric that weighed down the earlier colonialism, burdened as it was by the need to contribute something to the Liberal façade.

But just as the West is tuning up the propaganda for more Imperialist wars, it is presented with a domestic problem. Because realisations about the periphery have punctured the core, and a considerable proportion of its demos now openly identify with the forces resisting western........

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