THE PEOPLES’ LEADER
With the sedentarisation of people they began to form an idea of the area that they lived in, its extension and its boundaries, which were mostly determined by nature and the features of the landscape. Clans and tribes that had settled in a certain area and lived there for a long period of time developed the notions of a common identity and of a homeland. The boundaries between what the tribes saw as their homelands were not yet borders.
Commerce, culture or language were not restricted by boundaries. Territorial borders remained flexible for a long time. Feudal structures prevailed almost everywhere, and now and then dynastic monarchies or great multiethnic empires rose with continuously changing borders and many different languages and religious communities, such as the Roman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire or the British Empire. They survived for long periods of time and endured many political changes because their feudal basis enabled them to distribute power flexibly over a wide range of smaller, secondary power centres.
Nation-State and Power
With the appearance of the nation-state, trade, commerce and finance pushed for political participation and subsequently added their power to traditional state structures. The development of the nation-state at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution more than 200 years ago went hand in hand with the unregulated accumulation of capital on the one hand and the unhindered exploitation of a fast-growing population on the other hand. The new bourgeoisie which rose from this revolution wanted to take part in political decisions and state structures. Capitalism, their new economic system, thus became an inherent component of the new nation-state.
The nation-state needed the bourgeoisie and the power of capital in order to replace the old feudal order and its ideology, which rested on tribal structures and inherited rights, with a new national ideology that united all tribes and clans under the roof of the nation. In this way, capitalism and nation-state became so closely linked to each other that neither could be imagined as existing without the other.
As a consequence, exploitation was not only sanctioned by the state but even encouraged and facilitated. But above all the nation-state must be thought as the maximum form of power. None of the other types of state have such a capacity for power. One of the main reasons for this is that the upper part of the middle class has been linked to the process of monopolisation in an ever-increasing manner. The nation-state itself is the most developed and complete monopoly. It is the most advanced unity of monopolies such as trade, industry, finance and power.
One should also think of ideological monopoly as an indivisible part of the power monopoly.
The State and its Religious Roots
The religious roots of the state have already been discussed in detail. Many contemporary political concepts and notions have their origin in religious or theological concepts or struc-tures. In fact, a closer look reveals that religion and divine ima gination brought about the first social identities in history. They formed the ideological glue of many tribes and other pre-state communities and defined their existence as communities.
Later, after state structures had already developed, the traditional links between state, power and society began to weaken. The sacred and divine ideas and practices which had been present when the community began increasingly lost their meaning in relation to a common identity and were, instead, transferred to the power structures of monarchs or dictators. The state and its power were derived from divine will and law and its ruler became king by the grace of God. They represented divine power on earth.
Today, most modern states call themselves secular, claiming that the old bonds between religion and state have been severed and that religion is no longer a part of the state. This is arguably only a half truth. Even if religious institutions or representatives of the clergy no longer participate in political and social decision-making they still influence these decisions to an extent, just as they are influenced themselves by political or social ideas and developments. Therefore, secularism, or laicism as it is called in Turkey, still contains religious elements.
The separation of state and religion is the result of a political decision. It did not come naturally. This is why even today’s power and state seem to be given, God-given we might even say.
Notions like secular state or secular power remain ambiguous.The nation-state has also allocated a number of attributes which serve to replace older, religiously rooted attributes like nation, fatherland, national flag, national anthem and many others. Particularly notions like the unity of state and nation, serve to transcend the material political structures and are, as such, reminiscent of the pre-state unity with God. They have replaced the divine.
When in former times a tribe subjugated another tribe it’s members had to worship the gods of the victors. We may arguably call this process a process of colonisation, even assimilation. The nation-state is a centralised state with quasi-divine attributes that has completely disarmed society and monopolises the use of force.
Bureaucracy and the Nation-State
Since the nation-state transcends its material basis – the citizens – it assumes an existence beyond its political institutions. It needs additional institutions of its own to protect its ideological basis as well as legal, economic and religious structures. The resulting ever-expanding civil and military bureaucracy is expensive and serves only the preservation of the transcendent state itself, which in turn elevates the bureaucracy above the people.
During European modernity, the state had the means necessary to expand its bureaucracy into all strata of society. There it grew like a cancer, infecting all societal lifelines. Bureaucracy and the nation-state cannot exist without each other.
If the nation-state is the backbone of capitalist modernity it is certainly the cage of natural society. Its bureaucracy secures the smooth functioning of the system, secures the basis of the production of goods, and secures profits for the relevant economic actors in both the real socialist and business-friendly nation-state. The nation-state domesticates society in the name of capitalism and alienates the community from its natural foundations. Any analysis meant to localise and solve social problems needs to take a close look at these links.
Nation-State and Homogeneity
The nation-state in its original form aimed at the monopolisation of all social processes. Diversity and plurality had to be fought, an approach that led to assimilation and genocide. It not only exploits the ideas and the labour potential of society, and colonises people’s heads in the name of capitalism. It also assimilates all kinds of spiritual and intellectual ideas and cultures in order to preserve its own existence. It aims at creating a single national culture, a single national identity and a single unified religious community. Thus it also enforces a homoge-neous citizenship.
The notion of citizen has been created as a result of the quest for such a homogenity. The citizenship of modernity defines nothing but the transition made from private slavery to state slavery. Capitalism cannot attain profit in the absence of such modern slave armies.
The homogenic national society is the most artificial society to have ever been created and is the result of a ‘social engineering project’. These goals are generally accomplished by the use of force or by financial incentives, and have often resulted in the physical annihilation of minorities, cultures or languages, or in forced assimilation.
The history of the last two centuries is full of examples illustrating the violent attempts at creating a nation that corresponds to the imaginary reality of a true nation-state.
Nation-State and Society
It is often said that the nation-state is concerned with the fate of the common people. This is not true. Rather, it is the national governor of the worldwide capitalist system, a vassal of capitalist modernity which is more deeply entangled in the dominant structures of capital than we tend to assume: it is a colony for capital.
Regardless of how nationalist the nation-state may present itself, to the same extent it serves the capitalist processes of exploitation. There is no other explanation for the horrible redistribution wars of capitalist modernity. Thus the nation-state is not with the common people – it is an enemy of the people.
Relations between other nation-states and international monopolies are coordinated by the diplomats of the nation-state.
Without the recognition of other nation-states none of them could survive. The reason can be found in the logic of the worldwide capitalist system. Nation-states which leave the phalanx of the capitalist system are overtaken by the same fate that the Saddam regime in Iraq experienced, or it will be brought to its knees by means of economic embargoes.Let us now derive some characteristics of the nation-state from the example of the Republic of Turkey.
