In March we opened a new series called Beyond the Nation(LSS 5 3 26), which suggested that there are a number of practical , and very pressing problems which could be more efficiently addressed if the response were global rather than by the current group of 193 or so mutually suspicious, jealously competing, nation states. In particular we looked at things like pollution, disaster relief, and the economic brakes imposed by creating national identities,

Thinking about it, that last is the very heart of what we’re on about, isn’t it? Because national identities are really, no viscerally, important to people. They have more power over our minds than any alternatives offered by religions, class, sports teams or profession. They not only define who we are: they define the behaviour others expect of us, and more importantly, the behaviour we expect of ourselves. And no one can deny the critical importance they have played at times when freedom was in critical jeopardy. Would Ukraine have sustained the fight against Russia for so long without a crucial sense of its own identity? Or for that matter would the USSR have sustained its own fight against the Nazis without incorporating a strong sense of Russian Nationalism? All this, and more can can be set in the balance for the Nation as the highest form of organising human societies, as we have argued elsewhere. (LSS passim: see our World Government series)

Yet nations are transient, fleeting things. Where are the Spartans or the Akkadians now? Men and women lived and died for their causes, and many like them, across thousands of years of history. Yet the real drivers of existence are huge impersonal things like climate, disease or massive technological leaps such as the Industrial Revolution. Britain spent immense quantities of treasure and lives trying to defend a position it had established in the Age of Sail, only to discover that the Age of Steam made all its efforts irrelevant[1] And so the question becomes “If your identity is so important, what price are you prepared to pay to maintain it?” Because if technologies can change, so can societies, and the identities which they generate.

We shall close the series with a personal anecdote, a thing we rarely do, Many many years ago still trapped in Undergraduate adolescence we were debating the question of Britain’s membership of what was then called the European Community with a fellow inmate, albeit far more intelligent than ourselves Being good Young Socialists we then followed the Orthodox Labour Party Line: that the UK should leave forthwith. Being entirely of independent mind (and far less neurotic) our interlocutor laughed and observed “You would have been against joining up Wessex with Mercia, wouldn’t you?” A quiet wisdom which time has made more memorable than almost any other things we have ever heard or read.

[1]Kennedy, Paul. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. New York: Random House, 1987. London: Unwin Hyman, 1988. ISBN: 0394546741 (US hardback); 0049230737 (UK hardback). see especially chapter 3

#nation state #society #politics #history #russia #ukraine #USSR #Britain #economics

The English Wars of the Roses (1450-1485) were savage bloody affairs. Forget all the costumes and Shakespearean poetry: the dynastic struggles of York and Lancaster really mattered at the time, and as late as Elizabeth 1 , the succeeding Tudor Dynasty lived in constant fear that a Plantagenet claimant might reignite the struggle. Now fast forward 80 years or so to the English Civil War, an even more sanguinary and passionate affair. No one cared in the slightest who was a Yorkist or a Tudor. You might as well have talked about Romans and Carthaginians for all the relevance it had at Marston Moor. Over, gone, forgotten.

Here’s another thought. Growing out of that civil war came a rivalry between Crown and Parliament that lasted for well over a hundred years, and twice exploded into violent war in the Jacobite rebellions (1715 and 1745) The leader of the second rebellion, called Bonnie Prince Charlie by some, lingered in exile until 1788. Read that last date carefully. Because the next year was the start of the French Revolution, unleashing a series of global changes so far reaching and dramatic that the world would never be the same again. Would anyone at Trafalgar, Waterloo or even in the British House of Commons, have tried to map their experiences onto a template provided by the Bonny Prince?

Our present age lasted from the Second World War until the second election of Donald Trump. It’s founding myth was 1940: gallant Britain battled alone until the mighty United States arrived to tip the scales decisively for the forces of freedom and goodness. After the war the benefits of Anglo-Saxon order were spread to places like Europe and Japan. It was good while it lasted. People kept gardens, obsessed with sport, brought hundreds of bright new shiny things and believed themselves to be clever and happy and free. Many thought it ws the natural order of things and would last forever.

We believe that the fundamental order of that world cracked after the US invaded Iraq in 2003. It was shattered by the financial crisis of 2008. Technological developments such as social media and fossil fuels produced profound and unmanageable instabilities in the environments of even very rich countries, rendering their political and economic settlements obsolete.

It is easy to mourn the passing of the old order, easy to rail against its destroyers like Trump and Putin. Such nostalgia is dangerous, for it will lead to attempts to live in the vanished past and even recreate it. Far better to first recognise this is a new age, and all old assumptions, all old patterns have been shattered irrevocably. There were good things in the old order. They must be preserved. There will be good things in the new, however remote and distant they seem. You have the weekend, ladies and gentlemen to consider what those might be. Enjoy it profitably, and we will see you on Monday.

#history #politics #economics #donald trump #vladimir putin #united states #NATO