boogey wrote:

dimitri wrote: Ross wrote: Is it really national liberation if you switch one ruiling class for another? unfortunately this is not rhetorical..... and the answer's "NO"! DIMITRI and why's that? I guess you refer to the flag you sport as your avatar? Especially in that case I don't think that would be true. the nation is a construct as race is. If I buy into nationalism I might as well buy into racist concepts. i try to explain why I think that (and apologize for not being able to do it with less words). the idea of the nation is quite recent. there has never been one unified Germany for example, let alone an identification as "german" before 1871 and even that was to extend dynastic power. the british royal family just changed their "german" sounding (cause that is where they came from - intermarriage between ruling classes anyone?) family name to "windsor" which was the name of their family home prior to WWI - until then they were known as the "House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha" line of the House of Wettin with the another branch being called "Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg" line of the House of Oldenburg. so much for that...). the essentialist notion of difference (with "other" "nationalities") and imagined sameness (with people of the same "nationality") is nothing but ideology and just serves, as Benedict Anderson put it, to make us go to war and die for powers that are as far removed from and abstract to individual lives as dynastic spanish rulers were for people in south america in 1795 or whenever... and to create the ability to make people willingly die for something (again see WWI) that is still a powerplay between ruling classes should be seen as one of the underlying reasons for nationalism. Having said this, I should add that I come from a part of "germany" (national borders all over europe are essentially still the same that were drawn by dynastic rulers who most of the time didn't even speak the same language as their subordinate people) that has been longer in the hands of "habsburgians" e.g the austrian rulers than the prussians (german?) and almost as long part of various french empires. switzerland is 25 min away there and i'm in france in about 10 min. Do I have more in common with someone in northern germany? the regional dialects are the same in france, switzerland and germany in that area (of course nowadays national languages are dominant, but that was part of the national agency to create more visible "difference"). these are just a few stupid examples and I have to stop myself to rant on, but I hope I get my point across. man, that all reminds me of being young and singing Slime's "Deutschland muss sterben...damit wir leben können" ("Germany must die... so we can live" that played with "Deutschland muß leben, auch wenn wir sterben müssen" ("Germany must live, even if we have to die"), a World War I motto)..... have to see if I have it with me....

The periodical "Bahamas" and punk-music aren´t good sorces for knowledge about history. The modern wellfarestate is the best society created by mankind and that requiers a stong nationality. Nationality might be "constructed" but so is other collectives as well. You must als be very clear about the difference between culture or race and nation if you live in such proximity to the Swiss state.

like I say, I have not reached any firm conclusion on this yet so what are we saying, is an Independent Scotland good or bad?

I'm still waiting on answer to my original question... is switching one capitalist class for another progressive? I say not, on the otherhand does Scotland have a right to self determination as a nation... yes but would it make life better... not sure?

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The modern wellfare state is the best society created by mankind and that requiers a stong nationality.

Why would that be? The UK welfare state and NHS are both products of UK Government, so far I have seen nothing from the SNP to suggest that such attacks, cuts and closures on the Welfare state and NHS would not continue in an independent Scotland.

Nationality might be "constructed" but so is other collectives as well.
Is that not the point I am making, that a strong, distinctly Industrial British working class identity has been created during the 20th century which links places like Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Belfast etc...I personally feel more attached to this identity (even though the act of Union and British Imperialism was originally forced upon the country.)

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You must also be very clear about the difference between culture or race and nation if you live in such proximity to the Swiss state.

Again why is that? I might be missing something here but is that not the point we are trying make...National boundries are artificial and can often divide closely related ethnic groups such as the Friesians, Kurds, Ossetians, Gaels, Basques, Flemish...

Or are all these old identiies now irrelevant due to mass immigration, and if so why then do we bother with creating smaller counties? I am really not sure, other than Communist rhetoric, I would been keen to hear any thoughts ?

Where do you find any Communist rhetoric in what I wrote?
A strong modern welfare state requiers a sense of community which hasn´t been created in any other contry than nationstates. Therefore I am against European integration (with its cross-border) regionalism and this cutting up of countries (including the UK). The European map should not be tampered with.

Ytterhogdal wrote:

The periodical "Bahamas" and punk-music aren´t good sorces for knowledge about history. The modern wellfarestate is the best society created by mankind and that requiers a stong nationality. Nationality might be "constructed" but so is other collectives as well. You must als be very clear about the difference between culture or race and nation if you live in such proximity to the Swiss state.

Ytterhogdal wrote:

Where do you find any Communist rhetoric in what I wrote? A strong modern welfare state requiers a sense of community which hasn´t been created in any other contry than nationstates. Therefore I am against European integration (with its cross-border) regionalism and this cutting up of countries (including the UK). The European map should not be tampered with.

I pretty much agree with Ross here and don't have to add much more. I would just like to know where you would get the idea from that I read Bahamas? By quoting Benedict Anderson? And no one said that Slime's "Deutschland muss sterben" is a source of historical knowledge. On the contrary it's about the future.
More seriously, you could argue that the Wellfare State that you seem to think of as the endpoint of human evolution, has just been created to apeace the unsatified revolutionary working masses around the turn of the last century. (As always St Pauli gives you an example in the good old chant "Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten! Wer verraet uns nie? Sankt Pauli!" / "Who betrayed us? Social Democrats! Who will never betray us! Sankt Pauli!" ). I think it's a good exercise to look beyond the nation state, why can't we say: although racism is very real - different human races don't exist (I might be more genetically different from my white next door neighbor than a black man in downtown nairobi) therefore race is a construct and we have to fight racism! How about: although nationalism is very real - the nation is a construct favored by those who want to stay in power and those who see it as their resource of power in a hierarchy of nation states. as it is not helping us to go further and create a more just and equal human (you may call it cosmopolitan) society - we have to fight it as well.
To use nationalism as an excuse for holding on to a (by now virtually non-existent - at least in my experience) wellfarestate doesn't do it for me at all and more or less is congruent with right wing ideologies (not saying that you favor them) I don't want to be associated with anyways.

edith says one last thing: I uesd to live in the French-Swiss-German border region and have friends on all sides and no I didn't experience major differences between the cultures or nationalities..... and you know that one could say that culture (whatever that is) is locally and regionally different - which might be a point for cross-border communities (if you have to make one)?

OK. But you´re wrong. The communist alternative has been tried out it ended in Gulag and Lubjanka. The social democracy on the other hand ended in such things as the NHS and the welfare state. Your communist rhetoric might have had a point at Zimmerwald but is simply post-1989 obsolete. The alternative to the social democratic wellfarestate is the liberal state were there is a "price on everything but value on nothing" least of all "human dignity".

Ytterhogdal wrote:

OK. But you´re wrong. The communist alternative has been tried out it ended in Gulag and Lubjanka. The social democracy on the other hand ended in such things as the NHS and the welfare state. Your communist rhetoric might have had a point at Zimmerwald but is simply post-1989 obsolete. The alternative to the social democratic wellfarestate is the liberal state were there is a "price on everything but value on nothing" least of all "human dignity".

Where do you see communist rhetoric? Anti-nationalism isn't communism and no, social democracy is not the only alternative. just because another society seems to be unthinkable right now, and there are no clear-cut answers to how alternatives apart from what we call democracy could look like, it doesn't mean that there are none. I guess it was quite unthinkable to have no 'ruler appointed by god' = king/queen/feudal lord (as even the church said so for quite some time and your immortal soul was in danger) for people in 1600 or so. But ideas progressed, while it seemed to be natural to "be ruled" and to accept your position as subordinate back then, it now seems to be natural to be german, english etc.. The nation-state might have been a progressive idea in the 1840s (debatable), today it is not progressive at all. I still have hopes to get to an more equal and just world, that is not dominated by artificial boundaries and identity markers like 'nation' that separate people. You obviously like to keep those boundaries, I think they have to be deconstructed as we looking for "a brighter future" (ok I got a bit carried away here )
Oh, and I'm quite critical of communist ideologies, and even though I think some of the stuff you wrote is a inaccurate - the NSDAP and Hitler has been elected in an democratic state, that is what democracy resulted in as well - I'm not commenting about you choosing to think I'm supporting communism, simply because it's far from right and not engaging with my arguments.

sorry everyone if I repeat myself an for the length... I honestly have to learn to put my thoughts into less words....

Ah, your just a quite normal little german without knowledge of anything that goes on in the world outside "Europe" (Germant France and Majorca)
The nationstate saved Europe from Hitler and his European dream Neworder. Monst importently of course the British and Soviet nationstates but also the recistence movements across Europe and then after the war there was the nation state and the wellfarestate. This was establish in order not to have the horrors of Fascism and Stalinismu intruding in Western Europe.

You might not be a communist, your anti-nationstate rhetoric is classicly communsit and your suggestion that the welfarestate stopped s revolotion is of course spot on. It was created to avoid extremism. Now the ruling class of Europe dosen´t feel threatend by Communism anylonger so it can revert to its old dream of a United Europe and conditions as they were before the French reovolotion. Priviliges for the eliets nothing for the rest of us. Neo-liberalism beeing written into our constitution, and a unelected constitutional court to uphold it.

Ytterhogdal wrote:

Ah, your just a quite normal little german without knowledge of anything that goes on in the world outside "Europe" (Germant France and Majorca) The nationstate saved Europe from Hitler and his European dream Neworder. Monst importently of course the British and Soviet nationstates but also the recistence movements across Europe and then after the war there was the nation state and the wellfarestate. This was establish in order not to have the horrors of Fascism and Stalinismu intruding in Western Europe. You might not be a communist, your anti-nationstate rhetoric is classicly communsit and your suggestion that the welfarestate stopped s revolotion is of course spot on. It was created to avoid extremism. Now the ruling class of Europe dosen´t feel threatend by Communism anylonger so it can revert to its old dream of a United Europe and conditions as they were before the French reovolotion. Priviliges for the eliets nothing for the rest of us. Neo-liberalism beeing written into our constitution, and a unelected constitutional court to uphold it.

ok, classy response... well, I haven't lived in europe for the last 4 years, so I assume I have some ideas about what happens outside of germany,
but hey, you seem to know me, who I am and what I do better than anyone else and I'm just a "normal little german, without knowledge about anything that goes on elswhere", so anyways...
one last thing before I'm out of here because I'm not stupid enough to waste my time with someone who doesn't follow the basic rules of a conversation... the national-state helped to create Fascism, as much as you deny it and among the first to fight fascist threats were International brigards in Spain that weren't drafted by a nation state...

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little german without knowledge of anything that goes on in the world outside "Europe" (Germant France and Majorca)

That's a bit harsh and un-called for methinks? It seems a little inappropriate to see such a comment on this forum.
Plus he makes a good point about the Spanish Civil War?

Yeah, can we leave out the ad hominem stuff?

This is an interesting thread, and there's no need to let it descend into a flame war. KEEP IT CIVIL, YOU BASTARDS!!!

Zim wrote:

KEEP IT CIVIL, YOU BASTARDS!!!

I+m not "civil" at least not when called a fascist because I support the social democratic vision of a society for all. At least the commo St Paulian antisemite namecalling has thus fare been left out. I guess it is what passes as civil in this culture?

Where and when were you called a fascist by anyone in this thread? I've skimmed through it again, but I just don't see it.

And wtf is "the commo St Paulian antisemite namecalling"? Are you carrying some baggage over from the German forum or what?

Zim wrote:

Where and when were you called a fascist by anyone in this thread? I've skimmed through it again, but I just don't see it.

Re-read some of boogeys posts.

Zim wrote:

And wtf is "the commo[n] St Paulian antisemite namecalling"? Are you carrying some baggage over from the German forum or what?

Yes.

OK, I've re-read boogey's posts, which were the main ones I read originally, and as far as I can see, the only time he mentions fascism is when he says, "...the national-state helped to create Fascism, as much as you deny it...".

To imply that this means boogey was calling you a fascist (particularly when you've already self-identified as a Social Democrat) is a bit like saying that Einstein, because he helped develop the technology which lead to the atomic bomb, was a cold warrior.

I think you're over-reaching. You should chill out - and so should I. Time for bed.

P.S. Don't fisk me. I don't like it.

Ytterhogdal wrote:

Zim wrote: KEEP IT CIVIL, YOU BASTARDS!!! I+m not "civil" at least not when called a fascist because I support the social democratic vision of a society for all. At least the commo St Paulian antisemite namecalling has thus fare been left out. I guess it is what passes as civil in this culture?

As much as I didn't want to say anything anymore, here I have to:
I'm not someone who is using the term "Fascist" lightly. I don't know where you get the impression from that I did call you "fascist" or indicated any link between a fascist ideology and you or your believes. I certainly did not say that. I don't really understand where your comment comes from
and would like some clarification here.
I'm trying to be nice, I hope it's appreciated.