Nationalism and the nation-state are making a come back. We know that these ideas never really went away but we were all meant to be living in a new, globalized world defined and ordered by transnational bodies like the IMF and the EU. The nation-state as a meaningful and powerful institution was believed to be an historical relic. The global neoliberal order which seemed to have us all convinced it was the only possible present and future has recently come under threat. Its advocates seem worried and confused, wondering how it has all started to go wrong and where the next blow might land. We longed to witness such scenes yet now we look on in despair as it is not a revolutionary movement from below that is shaking the established order but a reactionary return to the nation-state. Trump, the proponents of Brexit and the various fascists and nationalists of Europe offer people an escape from the global capitalist market by a return to the supposed safe haven of the nation-state and its borders. The promise is of course an illusion.
Trump cares for no one but himself and the language used to promote Brexit, that Brussels is comprised of an out of touch, bureaucratic elite, could just as well be hurled at the government in London. But people hoping for an escape from the current order can see no other option than a step backwards to the days of the sovereign nation-state. This nostalgic look back is generally the way with declining powers but it means that ideas believed to be receding into history, nationalism and the nation-state, are coming to the fore again.
Therefore we will need to pick up and develop our critique of nationalism and see what alternatives we can pose. The general arguments against nationalism and the nation-state are well known. The nation-state takes one aspect of life, national or community identity, and elevates it to the single defining feature. Under this idea, if you have a certain national identity-defined by language, customs and a shared historical narrative, then you must form one single united political community. The divisions within that community are ignored, given only a secondary place or forcibly destroyed. On a practical level the unity over a society and territory that nationalism seeks to create means that there will always be one centre of power and therefore one elite to enjoy it.
As well as countering the right-wing movements sweeping the board these days we need to look at nationalism in order to develop our own ideas further. The process of creating nation-states was so successful that we still struggle to get out of the nationalist view of the world today. Alternatives to this world view have so far failed to break the hold of the nation-state, the world of the international proletariat collapsed some decades ago and the transnational capitalism of the international middle class citizen is under threat now. One reason why alternatives to nationalism have faltered is that in many places nationalism was able to turn its vision of what the population of the nation should be into a reality. Not so long ago many state territories were culturally and linguistically diverse but under the nationstates the national identity was taught and hammered home till a more homogeneous population came into existence.
One reason why revolutionary movements have so far struggled to break the state is that for most people they can not imagine a world not divided into nation-states. Even during a period when the state is failing, such as recently in Greece, most people could not conceive of breaking the state as this would break the nation. So rather than burning parliament and creating new political communities they desperately hoped someone in the parliament would listen to them. Both the xenophobic nationalism of the right and the popular nationalism of the left are equally attached to this unity of the nation-state. Popular protests will never become true anti-state insurrections until we can break the link between the nation as a community with a need for a unified state.
History should be one line of attack against nationalism. It could perhaps be one of its weak points as nationalism and the nation-state rest on the use of history much more than other political ideologies. As nationstates were created each gave itself legitimacy by creating a view of the past which proved the nation’s existence, longevity, special features and claims to territory. Such histories gave people something to believe in and allowed the division of the world into nation-states and the internal strengthening of each state in turn. The nationalists did not invent these histories, they simply looked at the past from their own point of view and turned a complex and multifaceted reality into a narrower national narrative. Links were sought to connect all the different societies that had inhabited a territory throughout time in order to forge a single, coherent national narrative for a people and place.
I suggest that looking into history and engaging with mainstream views of the past could be one way to break the hold of the nation-state, on an intellectual level at least. We can look back at the national historical narratives in each state and see which elements should be challenged and which may be useful for prompting revolutionary ideas. One possible advantage of this approach is that instead of just basing ourselves on general principles and abstract notions we can speak about specific historical examples and what they mean for the present. For example if you read material from or about the struggles in the Kurdish regions you see that general principles-democratic confederalism, ecology, feminism- are combined with and applied to Kurdish history and that of the wider region. We can reject all states and then move on to explain what it is about the history and reality of the Greek, British, French, etc, states that we reject and point out how they have failed or what could be different. It is perhaps better to try and engage with history in this way than to continue to leave this field of knowledge to the nationalists and conservatives.
As an example we can look at some of the historical narratives that underpin the Greek state. Not surprisingly the Greek state and modern Greek identity have a particularly close relationship to history. The Greeks are meant to be the successors to the ancient society upon which the west puts its historical foundations. This idea is behind much of the justification for the Greek state- it is the return of the glory and liberty of ancient Greece- while at the same time it is behind much of the disillusionment with the state and Greece’s place in the modern world- the disappointing reality of a small easily dominated state is not what people had in mind. The Greek national narrative begins with the ancient world, passes through the successive empires of Rome, Byzantium and the Ottomans and has so far reached the Greek state. Stress is laid on the continuity of Greek civilisation which goes back more than 3,000 years to the edge of recorded time. The modern state is meant to be seen as the deliver from foreign oppression and the projector of this historical continuity. The permanent presence of the Greek language from, almost, the earliest recorded time and the rhythms of daily life are used to mould these different historical societies into a single narrative of an eternal Greek presence and civilisation. This would seem to justify the conservative view of history and support the idea that Greece has always been for the Greeks and should remain so. Add to this the sense of superiority that such a long and distinguished history gives and it would seem there is little in this narrative for people who want a radical change of society.
However, the centuries of Greek history are an example of the academic cliché of continuity and change. During the last 3,000 years enough has stayed the same that it makes sense to speak of a continuous Greek presence but this civilisation has taken many radically different forms in that time. In broad terms the famous ancient world of city-states, philosophers and polytheism was replaced by the Christianity of a world empire which in turn gave way to a rival conquering empire before that was replaced in a limited territory by a nation-state. Reconciling all of these different changes into one national narrative has proven difficult. Admiring the ancient polytheistic past whilst remaining loyal followers of the Christian church can be tricky and has led some to describe the Greek national identity as a split personality.
Encouragingly, we can see that this part of the national narrative demonstrates the fact that societies change greatly over time. National history jams together completely different societies in an effort to create a sense of unity and historical depth. Instead we should stress the differences between the various periods and forms of society to show that there is just as much change as there is continuity in any national narrative. From that point we can show that another radical change in the form of society is only in keeping with the historical record. This line of argument can be used with all nation-states as any long established presence will have gone through several different forms of society and political arrangement. For example, while there has been something recognisable as France for more than a thousand years even just a century or two ago there were several ‘nations’, languages and cultures within what is now the French state.
The world of ancient Greece has aspects of interest to revolutionaries. Anyone on the political spectrum can find something they like in this period. Liberals like to point out that Greece is the birthplace of democracy while failing to see that there is no historical link between the ancient and modern systems. At the other end Golden Dawn like to think of themselves as modern Spartans, though it is not clear if they have actually read any history or just watched 300. The recent direct democracy movements have also shown interest in the ancient world. However, it remains a period associated primarily with nationalism and fascism. A Greek nationalist may draw inspiration from ancient Greece and will certainly base claims for superiority on this period but the reality of the historical record does not fit easily into the nationalist view. In some ways ancient Greece fits into an anarchist world view better than the nationalist one.
The known facts about the historic populations of the Greek territories show a world anarchists would be happier with than nationalists. The single homogeneous heroic populations of nationalist myths rarely, if ever, existed. From as far back as we can know the Greek territory has always been home to a variety of populations. In the ancient world the Greek city-states neighboured a number of different groups. Around the mountains and coasts of the north and west were a number of tribes and kingdoms which while within a Greek cultural world were considered semi-foreign. For a long period of time this included the Macedonians, an aspect of ancient history with considerable impact on the Greek state’s foreign policy today. The Greek communities themselves were divided up not just into politically independent cities but also into a number of other groupings such as Ionian and Dorian. The Ionian Athenians were one of the few Greek groups to claim that they sprang from the soil and were the ever-lasting inhabitants of their lands. In contrast the Dorians admitted that invasion and migration played a part in their story. It is not always clear what these various possible identities meant at different times but from our point of view there is enough there to show that the golden age of Greece was not produced by a single unified nation.
These facts hold true for much of subsequent history and could be used to alter people’s view of the current society and its population. The Greek territories only became host to a remarkably homogeneous population around sixty or seventy years ago. What nationalists would like to see as an eternal and essential fact, a Greece of Greeks, is in fact a recent innovation. Viewed in this way the various waves of immigration into Greece in the last decades are more of a restoration of the previous situation than a new factor. For example an Albanian population had lived in Greek territories for many generations before the arrival of the Greek state, indeed many fought against the Ottomans to create it. The return of an Albanian immigrant population post-1990 only helps restore the pre-nationalist situation.
This point on population serves as a useful counter point to nationalist myths but of more interest to us is the decentralised nature of the Greek world during its golden age. The Greeks in their different forms could, and did, identify themselves as Greek in a similar way to how we see national identities today. Being born into a community which spoke Greek, in its different dialects, worshipped the Greek gods and followed Greek customs made someone Greek. An identity understood as distinct from the rest of the world. This common identity, however, in no way implied a political unity. The Greek political unit was not the nation but the city-state. The Greek world was famously divided into numerous city-states, most of them not much bigger than a modern village, spread across the Mediterranean. These city-states could come together into various leagues and alliances and there were religious centres and festivals which demonstrated a pan-Greek feeling but there was never a united political nation as modern nationalism implies there has to be. This ancient world shows us that there does not have to be a link between a sense of identity and political centralisation.
This period of disunity was this territory’s most productive and spectacular suggesting that the pursuit of unity through the state is undesirable and misguided. In many ways the success of this period was due to its disunity. The division of the land into many city-states meant that at any one time there was a variety of political systems in operation and communication. The religion was just as decentralised with stories and myths able to change from place to place without them being seen as false or dangerous. The complexity and diversity of this world is no doubt one of the key factors behind the high level of thought and philosophy that this time produced. Disunity served the Greeks well and significantly when some kind of unity was imposed, by the Macedonians, it marked the end of Greek liberty and its golden age. Using this example we can invert the usual nationalist story which say it is always better when different regions come together to form a unified whole.
We can use this part of mainstream history, its most famous and beloved period, to show that there is no need for a Greek state to guarantee the continued existence of Greeks as a people. Once we can show that different political forms and different forms of identity have existed then we can move on to judging our own world and help people to build new political identities not limited by national feeling. The ancient Greek world also gives us a view on what a future stateless world may look like. I’m not trying to suggest that the ancient Greek world was stateless, its fundamental unit was the city-state yet it shows that within a cultural area it is possible for a variety of political communities to exist. These communities sometimes cooperated and sometimes were in conflict and many of them operated on very different principles from their neighbours. If the nation-state breaks down we may well see the re-emergence of such a world with a cultural area split into different political communities.
We could even give this argument a rhetorical flourish. Feeling the need to live up to the elevated status of ancient Greece has imposed a heavy burden on modern Greek identity and its ideas. When a past is as admired as ancient Greece it is impossible for any living reality to reach that standard. Yet the goal, trying to rediscover and renew the spirit of the ancient world is not necessarily bad and can perhaps even serve a revolutionary purpose. Restoring some of the better aspects of the ancient Greek world would mean destroying the nation-state and allowing a variety of political communities to flourish in its place. In this way anarchist revolution does not have to position itself as counter to all historical experience. Instead revolution can be shown as a way to reach an historical goal, such as a return of ancient Greece, whilst anarchist ideas and principles can help us avoid merely replicating a past period with all its many errors and injustices.
One side of the Greek national narrative can perhaps serve some purpose for us. However, in each national history there will be major elements which simply must be criticised and confronted. In Greek history the role of the Church is one such element. Nothing good can, or should, be said about the role of the Greek church in history and there is nothing in the history of this organisation that can be of help to revolutionaries. But the church takes a leading role in the national narrative and continues to be dominant today. The story goes that during the centuries when the Greek territories were under the Ottoman empire the Church preserved and protected Greek identity against its oppressors and when the time came it led the revolution against the Sultan. Much of this is simply myth. The Greek speaking church was a key part of the Ottoman administration and while Christians were a second-class group in a Muslim empire the church continued to be a rich landowner and upholder of the established order. Contrary to legend there were no secret schools where priests taught children their language and religion by candlelight and a visit to any of the monasteries of the period shows that the church was far-richer than much of its flock. When new ideas did emerge the Church was among the first to condemn them and they denounced the first revolutionaries for upsetting the established order.
In cases such as this we could try to use history to loosen the grip of the Church on Greek society. A basic point is that the Church was not always the defender and promoter of a Greek identity. In terms of identity the Christian period was as complex as any other and to an extant Christian and Greek (Hellene) were seen as two separate, and historically opposed, peoples. After almost 1,000 years of Roman rule the population of the territories had gotten used to referring to themselves as Romans. Christianity tried to draw a sharp dividing line between the Christian Roman world and the polytheistic Greek world that came before it. After the long centuries as part of the Roman and Byzantine empires the population thought of themselves as Romans and it would be some time before they learnt to think of themselves as Greek. Leading figures at the time stressed that they were not Greek but Christian or Roman. These points on historical identity are somewhat academic but again serve the purpose of demonstrating the ever changing nature of identity over time. More immediate issue with the church are its entanglement in the corruption of the regime, e.g the Vatopedi scandal, and its overlap with Golden Dawn and the far-right.
When we arrive at the two centuries of the modern Greek state the historical record of this political system is perhaps the strongest argument for revolution in Greece. The history of the current political form of society should be used to criticise the status quo. Moving on from the leftist critique of the Greek state, that a right-wing state excluded and repressed leftists for several decades, should be one of the goals of anarchist historical thought in Greece. This left wing critique of the Greek state is correct in its facts, the left had to struggle for a long time to be accepted as part of the state, but it is a phase that has passed. The left did eventually gain acceptance by the state and even came to rule it. This however did nothing to change the Greek state’s fundamental character and failings. Clinging to such a view of history leads to strange cases of amnesia, such as SYRIZA’s slogan of ‘first time left’.
A serious question the anarchist movement can put to society is how much more time should the Greek state be given to prove that it can function as an effective form of society? It has existed in its different forms for nearly two hundred years now and has so far been unable to break out of a pattern of regular crisis. At best you can say that the state has provided for a few fortunate generations in its time. If you grew to adulthood during one of the relatively calm and stable periods of the state then you were lucky. The next generation however most likely faced either a coup, dictatorship, civil war, default or bankruptcy the effects of which would last a decade or two. By this point in time the Greek state has tried almost every form of regime-it has been monarchist, republican, liberal, neoliberal, far-right, fascist, centre left and right and it has now even tried the radical left. A political form that has shown such a pattern of failure over two centuries should not be long for this world. In some respect this is already admitted. Liberals frequently claim that the Greek state’s attachment to the EU is necessary for it to stabilise and break free of its past. It is not extreme to question the wisdom of maintaining a political structure which has failed to establish itself securely and successfully after two centuries of attempts.
I have tried to give an example of how anarchists can approach mainstream historical narratives in light of the resurgence of nationalism. Of course, creating alternative histories will not on its own address the situation we find ourselves in. But we should remember that nation-states are not natural elements of the world that have always existed. Nation-states were an idea that got transformed into reality. They are a political form that was created and expanded over time not an ever present feature of the world. History gave a story and legitimacy to the nation-state builders. These stories about who people were and what they should do politically were just as important as the money and armies that forged the nationstates. Turning history against nation-states may help undermine them and prevent people from going back to a failed model as the world gets more unpredictable.
p54-63, March 2017