| Maldevelopment - Anatomy of a global failure
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3. The crisis of state
Nation-state and the ideology of nation in crisis'
Ethnicity:
myth and reality
The cultural dimension of development in Africa and the third world
The cultural dimension: the example of the crisis in the arab world today - the
end of the Nahda?7
New
forms of the social movement
Notes
An economic analysis of the failure of development confined to the narrow framework of
economic science can offer only very limited results. Economic science relies on a
threadbare concept of 'agents of economic change', limited to the abstract categories of
the 'dynamic entrepreneur', the 'consumer' end when needs must, the state, but in the
latter instance in a cut-down version of the 'economic functions of the state' (economic
legislation and regulation). Political economy looks wider by taking into account the
collective agents in the social classes and the state perceived less narrowly. But this is
far from being enough. For the whole problematic of peripheral capitalism raises the
theory of 'subjects of historical change' and challenges the simplifications drawn by
extrapolation from European experience. It has been possible to identify a series of
questions about the state, the nation and ethnicity, the character of the categories
called social classes in classical Marxism, the manifestations of social movement and
culture. These issues may be summarized as follows:
(1) Is the state a historical subject in itself, overriding social classes? In the
currently existing centres of capitalism, the state does appear to be so. But here a
concomitance can be observed between the active role played by the states in the
inter-state -primarily European - world system (at the level of national economic policies
as well as diplomacy) and the crystallization of that other social reality known as
'nation'. It looks very much as if this concomitance is missing in the Third World and in
Africa particularly, to the advantage of so-called 'ethnic' forms otherwise defined and
undoubtedly diverse. Is the result a series of particular handicaps interfering with the
state's manifestation as an active historical subject? What is the role of nationalist
ideologies in this context?
(2) Transnationalization sets limitations on the state. To such an extent that the
state may nowadays seem powerless against the forces operating in a worldwide economic
environment, in the developed centres and a fortiori in the vulnerable peripheries. What
is the character of this contradiction and how are the 'adjustments" forced by
transnationalization made? Are these 'adjustments' similar or different for the developed
and the underdeveloped societies?
(3) The social movement in modern history has appeared in two principal shapes:
organization of so-called 'crass struggle' (particularly of the working class - under
trade union and partisan form - and of some peasantries), and organization of the
so-called 'national struggle' (notably the national liberation movement in Africa and
Asia). These two principal organizational forms of social movement seem to have run
aground, whereas the wind seems to be in the sails of other social forms, whether
trans-class (the feminist movement for example) or with an ethnic, religious, linguistic
or provincial basis. To what extent does this evolution call in issue the concepts of
classical Marxism defining social classes as subjects of history?
(4) Study of the cultural aspect of societies has scarcely been brought into any theory
of global social change. The implied hypothesis here was that economic change makes itself
felt and thus causes a subsequent 'cultural adaptation'. It is a hypothesis that must be
questioned.
We shall go on to consider some of these issues in order to highlight the specific
character of the African situation.
Our era is certainly characterized by an awakening - or reawakening - of collective
social identifications other than those attributable to national and class affiliation.
Regionalism, linguistic and cultural adherences, 'tribal' or 'ethnic' loyalties, devotion
to a religious institution, attachment to local communities, are among the many forms of
this awakening. In the West and the East or in the Third World, the catalogue of these
'new' movements, or old ones with a new lease of life, is extensive. These movements are a
significant aspect of the crisis of state, and more precisely of nation-state, whether the
nation in question has greater or lesser reality or is merely imaginary. This crisis of
state must be viewed as a manifestation of the increasing contradiction between the
transnationalization of capital (and behind this of the economic life of all countries in
the capitalist world) and the persistence of the state system as the exclusive political
pattern in the world. The question that arises here is: if capital is becoming more
international, why do the peoples not respond with more internationalism, or by asserting
their class identity? Why, instead of class consciousness coming to the fore over the
diversity of 'alternative' aspects of social reality, does this consciousness lose ground
to 'racial', 'ethnic' or religious identity?
It is certainly not our aim to offer a reply to the question, but more modestly to
contribute to clarifying the analysis through offering an ideological critique of two of
the main social 'realities' at issue: nation (or the supposed nation) and ethnicity (or
the supposed ethnicity).
The state system in which we live is a system of genuine states or those allegedly
being built, to such a degree that in some languages, such as English, the distinction
between the two concepts is diminished by synonymous usage of the two expressions: the
United Nations body is in fact an organization of states. The 'ethnicity' concept which
must in turn be open to question - is advanced by opponents of the nation-state.
The first half of the question (the nation state and the ideology of the nation in
crisis) revolves around what we believe to be the main issue, the crisis of the modern
state as a consequence of the increasing worldwide expansion of capital. This general
crisis affecting even states outside the capitalist system (the socialist countries) hits
the states of the periphery more severely than those of the centre. There are two reasons
for this. The lesser reason is that the 'national question', in the sense of the nation we
know as the creation of the central capitalist state, is a social reality of a particular
time and space. It is the product of particular historical circumstances and this
crystallization has given rise to an ideological frame, and more seriously to the export
of this ideology on a world scale, including to the peripheries of the system where
circumstances did not allow the nation to take shape. The greater reason is these very
(economic and political) circumstances preventing the crystallization of the autocentric
(and potentially national) bourgeois state at the periphery. The current phase, typified
by the offensive of transnational capital to 'recompradorize' the states of the periphery
and dismantle the attempts at crystallization that were underway in the previous phase,
makes all too apparent the character of these unfavourable historical 'conditions'. The
threat to the Third World peoples of unlimited fragmentation (on ethnic or pseudo-ethnic
bases, or when the national factor is wanting or unsound) exactly in line with the aims of
compradorization, can be countered only by a dual objective: organization into states as
large and powerful as possible (while continuing to respect diversity) end 'delinking'.
The second half of the question (ethnicity: myth and reality) complements the analysis
by considering forms of social organization in the absence of the bourgeois nation.
Pre-capitalist forms that beyond their variety sometimes establish a so-called 'ethnic'
crystallization but more often prevent it. Peripheral, especially colonial, forms of
capitalism that are ranged about the objective of dominant capital (unity through
destruction) and are the origin of the ideological illusions of ethnicity. We go on to
consider the cultural aspects of the problem and their effects on the social movement.
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