National-Cultural Autonomy and IsratineBy Abraham Weizfeld

04-2009

Abstract

The Nationalism associated with the State is counterpoised to thenational identity associated with ethnicity, in the socialcontext. While the incorporation of ethnic national identity withthe State gives rise to the “exclusive nationalism”, nationalidentity per se is associated with Civil Society. The evidentcontradiction of the two concepts of national-identity and TheState is found in the mutual demands for self-determination for acommon territory, as is the case in Palestine/Israel or theimpasse of Québécois/se national-identity, in the context of theDominion of Canada.

The tendency of the 20th Century had been to seek ever morenumerous numbers of States which separate the various ethnicidentities on a territorial basis with the accompanying series ofethnic cleansing operations.

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1) Introduction

National-Cultural Autonomy and Isratine

By Abraham Weizfeld2009

an examination of the two-state proposition to determine ifit has any potential for the resolution of the fundamentalsocial contradiction between two Peoples. The 2-State notionaccommodates Zionist and its State by the adoption of theNation-State as a paradigm for a treaty between two so-called sovereign powers. Each considers the otherindependent even though there is a significant over layeringof population. The coincidence of nation and State is inactuality a fiction based upon ideological necessity alone.

Bauer p.37 , 39

Considering the social contradiction of two nationalcultures present in equivalent numbers, the prospect of ademocratic solution is limited by the refusal of eithernational population to allow itself to be relegated to thestatus of a permanent minority.

In the light of the dispersal of the two nationalpopulations in diverse territorial regions of the territoryoriginally know as Kana’an, the feasibility of a territorialseparation as is proposed in the ‘Two-State solution’ isnil.

The deconstruction of the Zionist Nation-State together withthe Bantuization of the Occupied Palestinian Territoriesrecognizes the existence of the two populations each withtheir own distinct political culture. In terms of firstprinciples it is the natural tendency of each of thenational populations to resort to the fundamentalconstitution of their Peoples’ assemblies to take into

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consideration the constitutional nature of the unifiedsociety that each are obliged to live with. As in the 35National Assemblies of the Sinai experience with Moses wherecivil society expressed itself without a State and without aterritory, and the emerging Palestinian civil society of theresistance, there is the basis for the reciprocal existenceof each national civil society in autonomous and integratedcohabitation.

Bauer points out that the centralist-atomist constitutionaldemocracy of Liberalism necessarily pits one nation againstanother while they each seek power in the State apparatus topromote their own nation’s needs and/or privileges.

“Every nation needs power, which means the possibility ofhaving its way, of satisfying its needs. But onlycentralist-atomist regulation obliges the nations to acquirethis power by struggling for direct influence within thestate, obliges them to struggle for power. The power of thenations to satisfy their cultural needs must be legallyguaranteed if the population is no longer to be forced todivide into national parties, if conflict between nationalgroups 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 ofPalestinian workers from the Israeli Jewish nationalcommunity seemingly as a means of ensuring Jewish self-determination while denying Palestinian self-determinationand social existence. This is the consequence of thecentralist-atomist paradigm which opens the intra-nationalstruggle under the domination of the Zionist State. Theanti-Zionist solution must then avoid the same paradigm andensure the fulfillment of each national community’s interestwithout denying another those very same rights by the use ofan artificial majority of votes. Ethnic cleansing hasbrought about the Jabotinsky model of development where thePalestinian population is limited to 20% of the population.In actuality, the two national populations are about equal

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in numbers now in the actual territories occupied by theZionist State and the inevitability of Palestinianpopulation growth makes a fragile thing of the manipulatedIsraeli Jewish majority.

To take the matter into consideration in the context of aunified society along the lines of the Isratine conceptthere would actually be a relative minority of the Jewishpopulation which would co-habitat when the Palestinianrefugee population is included, compromising an additionalfive million Palestinians.

In order to make the context of a unified society appealingto both national communities and so bring about itsfeasibility by; 1) removing the apparent need for nationalconflict and 2) allowing for the power of a united workingclass to take its effect. Such a programme would bring thenational relations into reciprocity where they are notforced to struggle for state power and by which thedevelopment toward democracy does not threaten the power ofany nation. It becomes evident that there is a necessity forthe implementation of democracy along the lines of a directdemocracy in a parallel fashion where each nation retainsits collective interests while securing the collectiveinterests of any other nation in the common society.

The constitutional programme implied by such a sense of commoncollective interest is only conceivable with the prospect ofworkers’ 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 otherconceivable form of regulating the relationships of nations to thestate, that form which Rudolf Springer (Renner) has termed theorganic conception. Each nation should independently satisfy its ownnational cultural needs, should govern itself; the state should limititself to the protection of those interests which are a matter ofindifference in national terms, but are common to all nations. Thus,national autonomy, the self-determination of nations, necessarily

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becomes the constitution program of the working class of all nationswithin the multinational state. 1

The dominion of the Nation-State has dominated The Modern Agewith its culmination during the 20th Century with its 125 millionlost lives during those various wars, including the massannihilation by nuclear bomb, not to speak of the industrialgenocide of Nazism .

The fixed idea of the Nation-State continues the monarchistconceptualization that had begun with the deification of the headof State/Empire. The emancipation of the Nations was broughtabout within the confines of the European State-Monarchy when themoral imperative of a national religion provided the commonconsciousness 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 thatnames itself Israel and occupied a territory within which onlyhalf the resident population is provided with full citizenship;considering that the proposed two-state solution in whatever formdefers to the current parcelization of the OPT (OccupiedPalestinian Territories) into Bantustan territories or, as thepreviously named ‘Pale of Settlement’; considering that there isconsiderable intermingling of populations; one is obliged todissociate territory from self-determination and so abandon thenotion of the Nation-State and form-up a society based on aconsensual decision-making process that begins with thenegotiations between the two parties for a peace treaty asproposed by all Palestinian factions and continually underminedby the State authorities of Israel. Resorting to the Jewishpopulation of Israel as such is the logical consequence of suchan impasse. An appeal to both the Israel Jewish Arab populationof Sephardim and Mizrahim on the basis of the mutual recognitionas Arab, together with the prospect of the mutual recognition ofeach national identity in reciprocity. Considering the massiverejection of the Millet status as practised in the OttomanIslamic Ummah, the status of a minority national identity is

1 Otto Bauer, p. 255-2565

considered obsolete by both the Jewish Arabs and the IsraeliPalestinian communities.

Accordingly there is the necessity for a strategy programme thatsurpasses each of the preceding constitutional arrangement thathave been imposed by one form of state or another. Theformulations for a bi-national State are suspect in that such aconception was also behind the verbiage of the South AfricanApartheid regime with advocated a ‘Separate but equal’ conceptionwith was moreso a merit system which awarded equality by thedefinition provided by one party alone. Such a definition ofrights was subject to the ideological rationale behind the Statein the first place. Any State would have its ideologicalrationale. To remove the discussion from that Statesuperstructure one has to consider constitutional formats such asa Confederation or Federalism in the context of Civil Society andnot the State, if it were to be reciprocal and operate on thebasis of consensual understanding.

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

The conception of National-Cultural Autonomy is originally foundin the conceptions of the Jewish Workers’ Bund and its historybeginning in 1897 together with the Wimberg Austrian Social-Democratic Party congress which provided for internal national-cultural autonomy2. Both sources are of interest in terms of thesocial infrastructure that is sought by each of the nationalidentities that conceives of itself as such.

2) Otto Bauer and Austrian Social-Democracy

2 Otto Bauer, ibid, p. 2586

In multiculturalism the proposition for national-culturalautonomy is oftentimes associated with a territory or provincewithin the context of a State. The proposition by Otto Bauer fornational-cultural autonomy within the Austro-Hungarian Empire wasconcerned with its failure to reconcile national-identity withthe State, as occurred in the U.S.S.R. as well. In theseinstances, national-identity was associated with territorialunits as if the one substituted for the other. The lack ofrecognition of the various national minorities was a fundamentalflaw in the perpetuation of the State. As such, the nationalitiesquestion was given a priority in spite of the centralizingdynamic of the State apparatus. The practice of majoritarianismwas in itself central to the monolithic State operation and yetinimical to it survival.

Each nation would believe its own minorities to be disadvantaged andwould see itself as able to combat the oppression of its own minoritiesby taking revenge on the minorities of other nations within its region.Thus, national self-determination on the basis of the territorial principlewould simple provoke renewed national struggles.

For this reason alone, the territorial principle cannot satisfy thedemands of the working class. 3

The need to overcome the majority criterion rooted in thedominant national culture in many cases was proposed to beovercome by the constitutional guarantee for collectiverepresentation of “sovereign corporations”.4 Such socialformations exist in and of themselves without the concurrentdefinition of any majority and is intended to overcome theparadigm of majorities and minorities. As such the bi-nationalproposal for Israel/Palestine is overcome in favour of theautonomy of each nation to allow for the integration of thePalestinian refugee population without giving rise to a permanentminority without power of the Israeli Jewish community. Thisallows for a consensual appreciation of an integrated society.

3 Otto Bauer, ibid, p. 2714 Nimni, Ephaim J., Introduction for the English-Reading Audience’, Bauer, Otto, The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy (Nationalitãtenfrage und die Sozialdemkatie), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis & London,, Translated by Joseph O’Donnell, ISBN: 0-8166-3265-0, JC311.B3813 2000, p. xix

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The topology of society became a dynamic soup of varying socialcurrents and cultures all intertwined into a given geography butwithout a specific territory of its own. Such cosmopolitanism ona grand scale was the means by which loyalty to the State was tobe achieved when the State became the guarantor of the nationalcultural autonomy that was held dearest by each particularculture.

In its pure form, the aim of the personality principle is to constitute thenation not as a territorial corporation, but as an association of persons.5

The precedent provided by the Islamic Ummah of the Turkish Empiregave rise to the Millet system of national autonomy extended tonon-territorial social entities. The mosaic of autonomouscultures was an internally stable form of governance. Althoughthe Dimmuni status of such minorities was recognized, protectedand taxed for the effort, as if such status was provisional andsecondary, it nonetheless inspired respect on the part of OttoBauer.

The democratic federation of national communities incubated byOtto Bauer challenged the notion of sovereignty in a unitary andindivisible construct replicated internationally by the principleof the self-determination of nations which require their nation-state and that such national-states only recognize other suchnation-states. At the same time Bauer sought the perpetuation ofthe bourgeois Austro-Hungarian Empire. The limitations of liberaldemocracies are demonstrated by the failure of Bauer to implementhis programme in the Austrian context. The incompatibility of theEuropean Nation-State and the relief offered by national-culturalautonomy is a consequence of the hegemony of the dominant nation.The secondary nature of national-cultural autonomy as in theMillet system offered a suspect remedy to a bourgeois nationalclass compact. The rejection of such autonomy is the prelude tothe collapse of that nation-state. Either conception of societyis, in consequence, the failure of a class dominated state sincethe dynamic of a state superstructure is to build itself on thesocial unit that most closely resembles itself. This state hasrested upon the national bourgeois class as a nation-state and inthe absence of the bourgeoisie is fated to tolerate the political

5 Otto Bauer, ibid, p. 2818

party that has formed itself into a pre-state body that is itselfa replication of the national stratum that it seeks to direct.The monopolisation of the State power is dependent upon thehegemony of the dominant strata of the population, that beingeither the national bourgeoisie or the national proletariat. Thesame problem applies in both cases. It is not the class incontrol that determines the prominence of the social project butthe historic social formation that has dominated the politicalproject previously. The viability of the project is put intodoubt equally by the fact that not all social formations arerepresented, neither the minority nationalities nor thesubordinate gender strata within each of the nations involved aswell.

The effort to reconcile the various nations coexisting in thesame political superstructure is a matter of accommodation of theminority or non-dominant nationalities by means of a sort ofautonomy. While it has been found that the autonomy granted thesubordinated social formations such as the Québécois or thePalestinians is insufficient when limited to a provincial or anon-sovereign Authority, it may also be found that theproposition for national-cultural autonomy is itself incompatiblewith the nature of the sponsoring state in the first place.

By consequence, the various national liberation struggles of the20th Century have sought to fit within the paradigm of what hasbecome defined as a nation. The formation of a nation-state isoftentimes confronted by the presence of further nationalitieswhich contest the hegemony of that particular nation assertingits particular sovereignty. The exercise of self-determination insuch circumstances becomes ethnic cleansing with the goal ofbuilding a predominant national charter to the socialcomposition. This is in itself the replication of the originalproblem for which the nation has sought to escape by building itsown nation-state. The attempts to induce a social assimilation byeconomic stimulation have failed on numerous occasionsdemonstrating that economic determinism or economic liberalismdoes not make a worker without a national-cultural identity.

The aspiration to national conquest within the multinational state istherefore based on good reasons as long as the nations conduct theirstruggle in terms of the pursuit of state power. The situation alterscompletely as soon as the atomist-centralist is replaced by the organic

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regulation of national relations. Here the state has nothing to offer thenations as totalities, and the power struggle of the nations therefore nolonger has any point. The nation is legally assured the power itrequires; it no longer struggles to obtain it. In this case, the nationtherefore no longer needs to pursue national conquest. 6

In the Palestine/Israel context, the PLO (Palestine LiberationOrganization) initially proposed a democratic secular state thatis based on the paradigm of the atomist-centralist state. This isexpressed as either a liberal-secular democracy, a bi-nationalstate, or a multicultural democracy. This list of paradigmsincludes the proposal for a “regional federal union” by MoshéMachover.

While the contradiction of the nature of national-culturalautonomy with respect to the State leads us out of the context ofthe State, the alternative remains unresolved. In default ofwhich, the tendency of the 20th Century had been to seek ever morenumerous numbers of States which separate the various ethnicidentities on a territorial basis with the accompanying series ofethnic cleansing operations. Ultimately, the separation ofethnicities is recognized as an impossibility, or a war crimeagainst human rights.

The concretisation of such constitutional proposals remainslimited by its association with the nation-state concept and theterritory to which it takes itself to belonging. The dissociationof nation and territory is fundamental to resolving thecontradiction between the counterpoised senses of national self-determination. Taking political culture as the fundamental aspectof national-identity rather than a particular territory allowsfor the independence of national identity from territory alone.National divisions are removed in respect to the sovereignty overterritory to become the independence of the national culture, andin consequence the People. While the modern national-state isfostered by a bourgeoisie class sense of order which prioritizesthe economic dominance of its inheritance, culture does notrequire a territory upon which to build an economy, which leavesaside a People, as such.

6 Otto Bauer, ibid, p. 276-27710

The manner by which a People expresses its identity in self-determination is by the constitutional provisions for nationalautonomy which apply to the members of that community rather tothe inhabitants of a particular tract of real estate. Thissocialization of the territory is accomplished in the name of allthe nations concerned without separation into Apartheid-likeconditions. By the provisions of national-cultural autonomy theorganic consensus of each Nation is expressed in their own polityformed up as Civil Society and coalesced into a ConstituentAssembly. The General Constituent Assembly being the federativebody. Matters of national-culture are carried by each of theconstituent assemblies organized on the basis of the civilsociety organizations. Those matters of common concern are heldin consideration by the general assembly. Ongoing matters ofcommon concern are implemented by tripartheid commissions, suchas judicial bodies and the self-defence apparatus. In theprinciple of reciprocal national relations in a common societyfor example there would be a panel of judges comprised of a judgefrom each national culture together with their common choice forthe third.

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

We have seen that socialism will necessarily lead to the realizationof the principle of nationality. However, in that socialist society willconstruct a federative state above the national polities into which thepolities are in tern gradually incorporated, the principle of nationalitywill change into national autonomy, the principle of nationality as therule oft e formation of the sate into the principle of nationality as therule of the constitution of the state. The socialist principle of nationalityis the superior unity of the principle of nationality and nationalautonomy. … it will be just as different from the centralist atomistorganization of our states as the equally diversely structured society ofthe Middle Ages…. The totality organized into national polities calledupon to independently develop and freely enjoy their national cultures –this is the socialist principle of nationality 7

The introduction of the concept of national-cultural autonomythen posits the nullification of the nation-state itself, as anexpression of sovereignty. The intensity of this contradiction

7 Bauer, ibid, p.41411

tends to increase with the continuing waves of human migrationwhich have never abated since the emergence of the human speciesfrom east-central Africa beginning some 200,000 years ago.

While Bauer limited national-cultural autonomy to nationalminorities, in effect the other of two or more nationscohabiting; it is in its reciprocal application that thefeasibility of a no-state strategy is conceived. The criterion ofa majority is abandoned as being superficial, arbitrary and anabrogation of minority rights. Considering that all members ofsociety are in a minority of one sort or another, this aspectaddresses the fundamental nature of democratic theory. In thepractice of national-cultural autonomy the pattern of nationaldomination by majoritarianism is annulled. Each Nationconstitutes 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 ofthe social by arguing “that the process of common reciprocalinteraction lived in a permanent reciprocal relations generates anational community and expresses itself in an intersubjectivebond that shapes each ‘individual National identity’ ”.8 Thissocial morphology (sozial Formenlehre) is linked to the will(Wille) expressed by Neitzsche in the sense that “will is thesocietalized expression of human existence … ‘nationalapperception’ “ 9 often expressed as national character or thecollective will (as in Gramsci) and the ‘community of fate’(Schicksalsgemeinschaft) (in Nietzsche)10. Kant’s Third Analogy ofExperience, the principle of community that “All substances sofar as they coexist, stand in thoroughgoing community, that is,in mutual interaction.” 11

The dichotomy of civic and ethnic identity is contextualized bythe State and social multiculturalism, respectively.Consequently, the nationalism associated with the State iscounterpoised to the national identity associated with ethnicity,in the social context. The incorporation of ethnic nationalidentity with the State gives rise to the “exclusive nationalism”8 Ibid, p. xxxv9 Ibid, p. xxxviii10 Ibid, p. xxxix11 Ibid, p. xl, footnote # 101

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that is integral to the antinomy. At its origin, the Hegelianconcept of the Nation-State presented national identity as theState rather than in its social Form of multiculturalism. Theevident contradiction of the two concepts of national-identityand The State is found in the mutual demands for self-determination for a common territory, as is the case inIsrael/Palestine.

The presumption that the national identity of a people dissolvesunder the economic determinism of the proletarian condition doesnot stand up to the historical record and is subjected to theevaluation by Nimni as well that, “Whenever the capitalist modeof production becomes dominate, an industrial proletariat emergesthat experiences similar conditions of exploitation undercapitalism regardless of national location. But in this case itis the similarity of fate and not the community of fate thatgenerates the common character.” 12 This “existence of a dynamicprocess of interaction” 13 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, or3) empirical (causal determinism as in Stalin/Lenin);

defining criteria of territory, language, etc.

3) Yiddshe Arbeiter Bund

In multiculturalism the proposition for national-culturalautonomy is oftentimes associated with a territory or provincewithin the context of a State. The initiative of Otto Bauer fornational-cultural autonomy within the Austro-Hungarian Empireconcluded with its failure to reconcile national-identity withthe State, as occurred with the U.S.S.R. as well. In theseinstances national-identity was associated with territorial unitsas if the one substituted for the other.

12 Ibid, p. xl13 Ibid, p.xli

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By origin the concept of national-cultural autonomy wasformulated by the Yidisher Arbeter Bund of Eastern Europe whichidentified a national consciousness beyond the bounds of any ofthe States where it was found. The Bund’s conception was basedboth on a secular identity of Jewishness and a localized sense ofintegration with the country of residence, usually that beingPoland. 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 interactionrises in contradiction to the nation-state that harbours asuperstructure around that base with the repressive apparatus andeconomic strictures necessary to maintain a certain socialcohesion. The implosion of such social constraints develops underthe dual dynamics of social tension and class revolt due to theapartheid-like conditions by which the proletariat is stratifiedinto its various national communities. This duel oppressionserves to differentiate the society into the various movementsthat seek out their self-determination for both social andeconomic causes.

4) Conclusion

The foundation of co-existence is to be sought in theconstitutional assembly which brings together, in directdemocracy, all social formations concerned to formulate andcodify the means of social existence based upon their mutualactuality and not the temporal superstructure that represents oneparticular interest or set of particular interests.

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ANNEX

Elaboration onThe White Book

of brother Moummar Kadhafi

by Abraham WeizfeldKebek Revolutionary Committee

Montréal

Ottawa July 6th, 2007

Outline:

Introduction

Speaking with the perspective of a second generationsurvivor as an academic whose parents escaped from the Nazioccupation during the Holocaust, I judge the concept of theEuropean Nation-State to be at the very least faulty and inactuality quite dangerous.

Since my family comes from the Jewish refugee camp inBreslaw I have known what it is to be a refugee and anydiplomatic proposal that fails to accommodate the 5 millionPalestinian refugee population, is not a solution.

Conceptual deconstruction

1.1 The idea described by the name ISRATINE isthe concept that this territory has a commoncultural tradition that cannot be dividedartificially into states that separate one nationfrom another. The enforced separation from onenation is necessarily the occupation and

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subordination of that nation to the apparatus thatis known as the Zionist State of Israel.

1.2 Foundation of Zionism: JNF as the State asentity introduces exclusivity demonstrated by theSeparation Wall and barrier in the Apartheid model

1.3 Historical cultural of Israel in the land ofCana’an

1.3.1 The Abrahamic Tradition

The White Book: “the Jews are Adnanitecousins to the Arabs on the father’s side, fromthe stock of Abraham, peace be upon him.” pg. 31.3.2 Joshua and the Hittites

The White Book: “the history of Palestinefits the pattern of other countries in the region:a country inhabited by different peoples, withrule passing successively between many tribes,nations and ethnic groups…” pg. 1

1.4 The Oslo Agreement as Interim 1.5 The Geneva Accord as solution1.6 Bi-nationalism1.7 Democratic Secular Palestine

The failure of the liberal democratic State1.8 Isratine1.9 Constitutional Federation of Nations in Civil

Society1.10 Direct and Parallel Democracy as Method1.11 The Nation-State of Hegel1.12 The Jewish Opposition to Zionism

1.12.1 Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians,July 3, 2007 Press Release

. “It is our position that the Israeli occupationof the West Bank and Gaza, which began in 1967, must endimmediately and that Jews and Palestinians should livetogether as equals, sharing the same territory withdifferent States or their own governments. This is the view

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that the ACJC wanted to bring to the Canadian JewishCongress and that the CJC leadership was determined toignore.” The refusal to hear our independent voice is proofthat the CJC is not a body representative of diversecurrents in Canada's Jewish population.

“It is essential that Israel and the Palestinians –including the duly elected Prime Minister Haniyeh – beginnegotiations …”

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Abstract brief

The State and National-Cultural Autonomy By Abraham Weizfeld

ForThe 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 contextualizedby the State and social multiculturalism, respectively.Consequently the nationalism associated with the State iscounterpoised to the national identity associated withethnicity, in the social context. The incorporation ofethnic national identity with the State gives rise to the“exclusive nationalism” that is integral to the antinomy. Atits origin the Hegelian concept of the Nation-Statepresented national identity as the State rather than in itssocial Form of multiculturalism. The evident contradictionof the two concepts of national-identity and The State isfound in the mutual demands for self-determination for acommon territory, as is the case in Israel/Palestine.

In multiculturalism the proposition for national-culturalautonomy is oftentimes associated with a territory orprovince within the context of a State. The initiative ofOtto Bauer for national-cultural autonomy within the Austro-Hungarian Empire concluded with its failure to reconcilenational-identity with the State, as occurred with the

18

U.S.S.R. as well. In these instances national-identity wasassociated with territorial units as if the one substitutedfor the other. By origin the concept of national-culturalautonomy was formulated by the Yidisher Arbeter Bund ofeastern Europe which identified a national consciousnessbeyond the bounds of any of the States where it was found.

While the contradiction of the nature of national-culturalautonomy with respect to the State leads us out of thecontext of the State, the alternative remains unresolved. Indefault of which the tendency of the 20th Century had beento seek ever more numerous numbers of States which separatethe various ethnic identities on a territorial basis withthe accompanying series of ethnic cleansing operations.Ultimately the separation of ethnicities is recognized as animpossibility, or a war crime against human rights.

The foundation of co-existence is to be sought in theconstitutional assembly which brings together, in directdemocracy, all social formations concerned to formulate andcodify the means of social existence based upon their mutualactuality and not the temporal superstructure thatrepresents one particular interest or set of particularinterests.

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

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The State and National-Cultural Autonomy

By Abraham Weizfeld

ForThe 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

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

In multiculturalism the proposition for national-cultural autonomy isoftentimes associated with a territory or province within the context ofa State. The initiative of Otto Bauer for national-cultural autonomywithin the Austro-Hungarian Empire concluded with its failure toreconcile national-identity with the State, as occurred with theU.S.S.R. as well. In these instances national-identity was associatedwith territorial units as if the one substituted for the other. Byorigin the concept of national-cultural autonomy was formulated by theYidisher Arbeter Bund of eastern Europe which identified a nationalconsciousness beyond the bounds of any of the territories where it wasfound.

While the contradiction of the nature of national-cultural autonomy withrespect to the State leads us out of the context of the State, thealternative remains unresolved. In default of which the tendency of the20th Century had been to seek ever more numerous numbers of States whichseparate the various ethnic identities on a territorial basis with theaccompanying series of ethnic cleansing operations. Ultimately the

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separation of ethnicities is recognized as an impossibility, or a warcrime against human rights.

The foundation of co-existence is to be sought in the constitutionalassembly which brings together, in direct democracy, all socialformations concerned to formulate and codify the means of socialexistence based upon their mutual actuality and not the temporalsuperstructure that represents one particular interest or set ofparticular interests.

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

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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. i 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.

i‘... Renner maintained that the element of language (spoken or native) was not

significant enough to represent nationality which in his view denoted “spiritual

and cultural community with a not inconsiderable body of national literature as

an expression of this cultural community.” 16 (Renner, State and Nation, 21)’

(Gechtman 2005: 6).22

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.ii

iiGender relations among the Mohawks of the Five Nation confederation:‘Women

shall be considered the progenitors of the Nation. They shall own the land and

the soil’, The Constitution of the Five Nations, 60-LX, TLL, in Parker (1916),

(also in Sanday 1987 (1981): 13)23

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 economy24

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 specialand more or less unique form that first began to manifest itself ratherlate in human history, probably – though the question is debatable –during the late Middle Ages in western Europe and England. Not untilthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did it begin to assumesomething like this modern form and then again, chiefly, in westernEurope 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

25

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, cutacross the Platonic/Kantian dichotomy. Nationalism borrows its imageryand verbiage from the organic option, but is based largely on thesocial reality of anonymous atomized society (Gellner 1995:2).

The dichotomy between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft is parallel to the

26

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 are27

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’iii. 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

iiiSee Dr. Salaman Abu Sitta’s demographic studies “And End to Exile”, Al-Ahram

Weekly, March 9-15, 2000 (Outlook, Vol. 41, No. 1, Jan.Feb. 2003, p. 42)28

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.’ iv (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

iv Gellner, Thought and Change, p. 16929

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 thestate cries out for a predominantly political explanation. Self-conscious nations emerged from the struggle for representativegovernment, initially born of the pressures of state militarism.Whatever atrocities were later committed in the name of the nation, itsemergence lay with those democratic ideals of this period that we mostvalue today (Mann 1995:48) . v

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) vi, 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

v The Israeli historian Benny Morris, who has contributed to the ‘post-Zionist’ research nonetheless states;

‘the need to establish this state in this place overcame the injustice that wasdone to the Palestinians by uprooting them. ... If he [Ben-Gurion] had carried outa full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the Stateof Israel for generations.’http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/380984.html Haaretz, January 09, 2004 Tevet 15, 5764

vi‘In their demand for political citizenship for ‘the people’ and ‘the nation’ 2 after prolonged social struggles, such labels were usually restricted for much ofthe nineteenth century to bourgeois and petty bourgeois males drawn from dominantreligious and ethnic group, but later the peasantry, the working class, minorities and eventually women - joined people and nation. 2. Some would argue that this process occurred rather earlier in England. Kohn (1967) and Greenfeld (1992) believe English conceptions of nation and nationalismarose in the seventeenth-century struggle against monarchical taxation (reinforced by a religious populism).’ (Gellner 1995: 48)

30

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 vii. 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, thatnationality is best understood as a cultural entity; that is, asan identity belonging to civil society, not the state. It seesnational identity as a civil entitlement of citizens, thesqueezing or attempted abolition of which, even when ostensiblypursued by states in the name either of higher forms of humansolidarity or of protecting the ‘core national identity’ (IsaiahBerlin), serves only to trigger off resentment, hatred andviolence 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

vii‘.... virtually everywhere, nationalist movements focused on existing political units, provinces with distinct assemblies or administrations centred onold political units.’ (Mann 1995:49)

31

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 [Habsburgcentralists], 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 infederalism, although Mann and the theories of nationalism fail toresolve the co-existence of national-identity in the State, concludingpessimistically;

Mild nationalism - whether state-reinforcing or state-subverting - isdemocracy achieved, aggressive nationalism is democracy perverted. Thesolution is therefore, to achieve democracy – especially federal,

32

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 viii 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.

viiiSee Arend Lijphart, 1968. The Politics of Accommodation. Berkeley & Los Angeles:

University of California Press and George Tsebelis. 1990. Nested Games. Berkeley &

Los Angeles, U. Of California Press.33

‘State’ and ‘’nation’ came to be used interchangeably ... Suchexpressions reinforce the assumption traceable to the eighteenthcentury, that there is no other way of defining the word ‘nation’ thanas a territorial aggregate whose various parts recognize the authorityof the same state, an assumption captured in Karl Deutsch’s famousdefinition of a nation as ‘a people who have hold of a state’ (7)(Keane 1995:19). ix

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

The national state claims to treat all citizens as equal members of thenation, but this fair-sounding principle only serves to disguise thetyranny 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 ismisplaced ingenuity to try and classify nationalisms according to theparticular aspect which they choose to emphasize. What is beyonddoubt is that the doctrine divides humanity into separate anddistinct nations, claims that such nations must constitute sovereignstates, and asserts that the members of a nation reach freedom andfulfilment by cultivating the peculiar identity of their own nationand 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 seldomsuccessful, since nationalists consider that political and culturalmatters are inseparable, and that no culture can live if it is notendowed with a sovereign state exclusively its own (Kedourie1996:116-117) .

ix7. K. Deutsch. 1969. Nationalism and Its Alternatives. New York: p. 19. in Keane, John.

‘Nations, Nationalism and European Citizens’, pp. 182-207 in (Periwal. ed. 1995).34

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 x, 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).

xIn Stanley Ryerson’s critique of Professor Lower’s Canada One Hundred : 1967-1967,

“The other major predisposing factor was the extension of communication ...” p.

17, he adds in “read: capitalist industrialization”, p. 426, Unequal Union.35

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 xi.

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

xi

?A proof is provided by Garth Stevenson in his essay ‘Federalism and the

political economy of the Canadian state’, pp. 71-100 Part II: Capitalism and federalism in

The Canadian State: political economy and political power edited by Leo Panitch (University of

Toronto Press), page 94, in which the Chairman of the CPR, the first cross-Canada

railway argues for Balkanization of the Canadian economy so as to flow south-

north. 36

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 intoobjective experience we only know in space and time. Now space andtime, Kant argued, are not properties of things; they are rathersomething contributed by the perceiving self to the sensationsimpinging 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

37

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 besaid for it is that it is an attempt to establish once and for allthe reign of justice in a corrupt world, and to repair, for ever, theinjuries of time. But this best is bad enough, since to repair suchinjuries other injuries must in turn be inflicted, and no balance isever struck in the grisly account of cruelty and violence. ... It isa question which, in the nature of the case, admits of no final andconclusive answer (Kedourie 1996:139). xii

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

xiiLord Action: ‘... nationality ... does not aim either at liberty or prosperity, both of which it sacrifices to the imperative necessity of making thenation the mould and measure of the State ...’

38

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 forproperty rights, exists for the people as a miserable replacement forGeist [Nation] and for organisations with specific purposes; and nowthe people are supposed to exist for the sake of the state, whichpretends 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 (Maurer1971:93).

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.

39

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).

40

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 is41

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 in42

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 Wardeveloped in the suppressed nationalities an extreme nationalismwhich finds expression today in the according by the new-made statesof the same treatment to their national minorities which, as nationalminorities, they themselves once received -- a phenomenon showing alltoo clearly that little states following the footsteps of great onesand 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 nationalities43

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 and44

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.xiii The Nation emerges out of the

xiii‘Hence, in Medem’s definition national culture was the particular cultural form that shapes or modifies a content which in itself was not particular but shared by all peoples ...’ (Gechtman 2007:79)

References

45

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

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46

consciousness in the inter/intra-national/s context. The absence of an

intermediary State superstructure allows for a Reciprocal Principle

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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

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47

limitations in federated reciprocity.

-end-

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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,Periwal, Sukumar ed. 1995. Notions of Nationalism. Budapest, London, N.Y.: CentralEuropean University Press

Purvis, Trevor. (April-May-June 1996). Marxism and the Problem of the Nation, pp. 33-56, Winnipeg: Socialist Studies Bulletin / Bulletin d’Etudes Socialists,Number44.

Rodinson, Maxime. 1983. Cult, Ghetto, and State: The Persistence of the Jewish Question. London:Al Saqi Books, Zed Press

Rocker, Rudolph. 1978 [1937] . Nationalism and Culture. Minnesota: The CroixsidePress.

Ryerson, Stanley B. 1973. Unequal Union: Roots of Crisis in the Canadas, 1845-1873. Toronto:Progress Books.

Shafer, Boyd C. 1972. ’I: Problems of Meaning’, pp. 3-22. Faces of Nationalism: NewRealities and Old Myths. New York & London: A Harvest Book.

Treaty of Westphalia. 1648. http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/westphal.htm48

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Endnotes

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