Eliminating nationalism isn’t a bad thing but moving from A immediately to B wouldn’t work today and it wouldn’t work then either. Building the larger identity then having the smaller identity shrink over time is the correct approach. We only need to look at things historically to see how this has functioned, half the counties in each country were once identities that people cared about that have now shrunk so much that they’re barely remembered.
China is doing this path right now, and I think Lenin definitely saw that sort of path as correct. And it’s working in China pretty well from what I can tell.
It should be mentioned that such local identities werent (and have never, to my knowledge) been abandoned without force either directly, like France’s eradication of local languages and dialects; liberal educations’ destruction of the lower class cultures or indirectly like by threatening people with the “natural” processes of eviction and/or starvation if they refuse to leave their home areas; by forcing kids into education, often away from home developed by global north thinktanks only applicable to (very limited) specialist jobs in the cities
Right I agree and don’t dismiss that. But I do think those smaller identities appear as a result of material conditions. Community for safety and competition with other groups being a couple of them.
If you eliminate the conditions of needing safety and needing to compete (among others), you eliminate a large part of the need for small area identities. This then reorganises into the larger scale identities of nationality. And this too can (and will) reorganise into international identity when the material conditions that create nationalism are removed.
I am simplifying the process of course but you get what I mean. These structures occur for a reason and removing those reasons can give way to the new structures through a less violent and forceful process.
Eliminating nationalism isn’t a bad thing but moving from A immediately to B wouldn’t work today and it wouldn’t work then either. Building the larger identity then having the smaller identity shrink over time is the correct approach. We only need to look at things historically to see how this has functioned, half the counties in each country were once identities that people cared about that have now shrunk so much that they’re barely remembered.
China is doing this path right now, and I think Lenin definitely saw that sort of path as correct. And it’s working in China pretty well from what I can tell.
It should be mentioned that such local identities werent (and have never, to my knowledge) been abandoned without force either directly, like France’s eradication of local languages and dialects; liberal educations’ destruction of the lower class cultures or indirectly like by threatening people with the “natural” processes of eviction and/or starvation if they refuse to leave their home areas; by forcing kids into education, often away from home developed by global north thinktanks only applicable to (very limited) specialist jobs in the cities
Right I agree and don’t dismiss that. But I do think those smaller identities appear as a result of material conditions. Community for safety and competition with other groups being a couple of them.
If you eliminate the conditions of needing safety and needing to compete (among others), you eliminate a large part of the need for small area identities. This then reorganises into the larger scale identities of nationality. And this too can (and will) reorganise into international identity when the material conditions that create nationalism are removed.
I am simplifying the process of course but you get what I mean. These structures occur for a reason and removing those reasons can give way to the new structures through a less violent and forceful process.