Beyond Nationalism and the Nation-State: Radical Approaches to Nation 2020055592, 2020055593, 9780367443016, 9780367684020, 9781003008842

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Routledge Studies in Nationalism and Ethnicity

BEYOND NATIONALISM AND THE NATION-STATE RADICAL APPROACHES TO NATION Edited by . Ilker Cörüt and Joost Jongerden

BEYOND NATIONALISM AND THE NATION-STATE

This book centers on one fundamental question: is it possible to imagine a progressive sense of nation? Rooted in historic and contemporary social struggles, the chapters in this collection examine what a progressive sense of nation might look like, with authors exploring the theory and practice of the nation beyond nationalism. The book is written against the background of rising authoritariannationalist movements globally over the last few decades, where many countries have witnessed the dramatic escalation of ethnic-nationalist parties impacting and changing mainstream politics and normalizing anti-immigration, antidemocratic, and Islamophobic discourse. This volume discusses viable alternatives for nationalism, which is inherently exclusionary, exploring the possibility of a type of nation-based politics which does not follow the principles of nationalism. With its focus on nationalism, politics, and social struggles, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of political and social sciences. İlker Cörüt is Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Centre for Citizenship, Social Pluralism and Religious Diversity at Potsdam University, Germany. He is interested in anthropology of the state and Turkish nationalism, nationalism studies, contemporary social theory, and the political economy of modern Turkish history and the Kurdish question. Joost Jongerden is Associate Professor Do-it-Yourself development at the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and Project Professor at the Asian Platform for Global Sustainability & Transcultural Studies at Kyoto University, Japan. Having a geographical focus on the rural,Turkey and Kurdistan, his research centers on the question of how people create and maintain a livable life under conditions of precarity.

Routledge Studies in Nationalism and Ethnicity Series Editor:Timofey Agarin, Queen's University Belfast, UK

This new series draws attention to some of the most exciting issues in current world political debate: nation-building, autonomy, and self-determination; ethnic identity, conf lict, and accommodation; pluralism, multiculturalism, and the politics of language; ethnonationalism, irredentism and separatism; and immigration, naturalization, and citizenship. The series will include monographs as well as edited volumes, and through the use of case studies and comparative analyses will bring together some of the best work to be found in the field. Nationalism, Ethnicity and Boundaries Conceptualising and understanding identity through boundary approaches Edited by Jennifer Jackson and Lina Molokotos-Liederman Minorities and Reconstructive Coalitions The Catholic Question Willie Gin Separatism and the State Damien Kingsbury Beyond Nationalism and the Nation-State Radical Approaches to Nation Edited by İlker Cörüt and Joost Jongerden For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com /Routledge-Studies-in-Nationalism-and-Ethnicity/book-series/NE

BEYOND NATIONALISM AND THE NATION-STATE Radical Approaches to Nation

Edited by İlker Cörüt and Joost Jongerden

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, İlker Cörüt and Joost Jongerden; individual chapters, the contributors The right of İlker Cörüt and Joost Jongerden to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cörüt, İlker, editor. | Jongerden, Joost, editor. Title: Beyond nationalism and the nation-state : radical approaches to nation / edited by İlker Cörüt and Joost Jongerden. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge studies in nationalism and ethnicity | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020055592 (print) | LCCN 2020055593 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367443016 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367684020 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003008842 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: State, The--Case studies. | Nationalism--Case studies. | World politics--21st century--Case studies. Classification: LCC JC11 .B485 2021 (print) | LCC JC11 (ebook) | DDC 320.1--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055592 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055593 ISBN: 978-0-367-44301-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-68402-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-00884-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

CONTENTS

List of contributors Radical approaches to nation: An introduction İlker Cörüt and Joost Jongerden PART I COLLECTIVE ACTION, SELF-RULE, AND AUTONOMY

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1

1 A democratic nation: The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the idea of nation beyond the state Joost Jongerden and Cengiz Gunes

3

2 Hikmet Kıvılcımlı’s “History Thesis” and the nation-form: National revolutionaries as modern barbarians? İlker Cörüt

23

3 Dreams and realities: Do-it-yourself (autonomic) reincorporation by ex-insurgents in Colombia Julián Cortés Urquijo and Gerard Verschoor

47

PART II NATION, PUEBLO, NAROD

4 Venezuela: Revolutionary Bolivarianism against the colonial nation-state Dario Azzellini

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Contents

5 Which nation is this? Brexit and the not-so-United Kingdom John Clarke 6 Narod as a radical political invention: The outset of intellectual struggles over the nation in nineteenthcentury Russia Gözde Yazıcı Cörüt PART III ANTI-COLONIAL NATION

7 The Arab nation, the Chinese model, and theories of self-reliant development Max Ajl 8 Revolution and nation building in Burkina Faso Ernest Harsch 9 José Carlos Mariátegui and politics: Reform, revolution, and populism Juan E. De Castro Index

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CONTRIBUTORS

Max Ajl is an Associated Researcher with the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment and a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. He writes on the place of the countryside in global development. Dario Azzellini is a Professor in the PhD Program of the Academic Unit for Development Studies at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, Mexico and a Visiting Scholar at the Latin American Studies Program at Cornell University, USA. His research centers on labor studies, workers’ and local self-management, social movements, and global political economy, with a special focus on Latin America and Europe. Juan E. De Castro is an Associate Professor in Literary Studies at Eugene Lang

College of Liberal Arts at the New School, New York, USA. His research is on twentieth-century and contemporary Latin American literature and its imbrication with the region's political evolution. John Clarke is an Emeritus Professor at the Open University, UK and has been

a recurrent Visiting Professor at the Central European University, Hungary. He is currently researching the turbulent times marked by the rise of nationalist, populist, and authoritarian politics, supported by a Leverhulme fellowship. Julián Cortés Urquijo is a PhD Candidate in Social Sciences in the Chair Group

Sociology of Development and Change at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. He also belongs to the research group Agriculture, Environment, and Society, AGRAS of the Department of Agrarian Sciences at the National University of Colombia. He was a member of the FARC-EP armed movement. His research

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interests are solidarity economy, demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration (DDR), peace building, and social movements. Gözde Yazıcı Cörüt is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) in Leipzig, Germany and a Principle Investigator at the Transottomanica Research Project. In broad terms, her research focuses on trans-imperial histories across Eurasian borderlands. İlker Cörüt is Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Centre for Citizenship, Social

Pluralism, and Religious Diversity at Potsdam University, Germany. He is interested in anthropology of the state and Turkish nationalism, nationalism studies, contemporary social theory, and the political economy of modern Turkish history and the Kurdish question. Cengiz Gunes is an Associate Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the

Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University, UK. His research interests are in political theory, nations and nationalism, research methods, peace and conflict studies, Kurdish nationalism, and conflict in the Middle East (especially Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran). Ernest Harsch is a Research Scholar at Columbia University’s Institute of African

Studies in New York, USA. His scholarly and journalistic work focuses most extensively on African social movements, political and social conflicts, and sustainable development. Joost Jongerden is Associate Professor Do-it-Yourself development at the Rural

Sociology Group at Wageningen University, the Netherlands and Project Professor at the Asian Platform for Global Sustainability & Transcultural Studies at Kyoto University, Japan. Having a geographical focus on the rural, Turkey and Kurdistan, his research centers on the question of how people create and maintain a livable life under conditions of precarity. Gerard Verschoor is Assistant Professor at Sociology of Development and Change

at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. He works at the intersections of political ontology, actor-network, indigenous perspectivism, and decoloniality in the context of socio-ecological conflicts.

RADICAL APPROACHES TO NATION: AN INTRODUCTION İlker Cörüt and Joost Jongerden

Nationalism has been much debated in the social sciences (Schoffeleers 1978, Gellner 1983, Smith 1983, Hobsbawn 1990, Anderson 1991, Greenfield 1992, Connor 1994, Smith 1994, Hobsbawn 1996, Mojab 1996, Beck 2007, Keitner 2007, Nimni 2007, Köksal 2010, Al-Ali and Pratt 2011, Bailey and Winchester 2012, Johnston et al. 2015). Many writers have considered nationalism a primarily nineteenth-century phenomenon, one that contributed to two world wars in the twentieth century but which they expected not to survive the millennium. However, its obituary was prematurely written (Appadurai 1996) . Toward the end of the last century and in the first decades of this one, we have witnessed a virulent resurgence of nationalism. The “tragic death of Yugoslavia” (Denitch 1994) and atrocities accompanying the breakup of that former Balkan state was just one example. In fact, Jinping’s China, Putin’s Russia, Modi’s India, Erdoğan’s Turkey, Orban’s Hungary, and Kaczynski’s Poland have all offered examples of a “strong” leader heading a resurgent nationalism. The phenomenon of Trump’s America has expressed a related, reactionary development in the context especially of economic globalism, while Aung San Suu Kyi’s Myanmar and leading members of the European Union (EU), including Germany, France, Austria, and the Netherlands, have witnessed the dramatic rise of ethno-nationalist parties setting the tone for mainstream politics and the normalization of anti-immigration, anti-democratic, and Islamophobic discourses. The recent f lare-up of the armed conf lict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over long-disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region verifies the endurance of nationalist forms of claim-making over territory and culture. It is partly against the background of this upswing in nationalist politics over recent decades that the present work is conceived. At the same time, however, this book conceives of the nation beyond such versions from the past, which have been produced by a parochial nationalism. By thus

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detaching nation from nationalism, the latter is treated as a specific, and not the single form of nation-based politics. This enables a visibility and clarification of the characteristics of non-nationalist forms of nation-based politics. To that end, this book identifies conditions under which nation-based politics may acquire an anti-hegemonic, emancipatory form. In order to accomplish these objectives, several issues and a variety of subjects from different contexts and periods are addressed. It is important to stress that the distinctive aspect of the present work is not just the dissociation of the idea of nation from its xenophobic, ethnicauthoritarian interpretations. In fact, several publications in nationalism studies have worked, one way or another, around the idea of nations as “imagined” (Anderson 1991) and the distinctions between “civic” and “ethnic” (Brubaker 1992) and “Western” and “Eastern” nationalisms (Kohn 1945). Rather, the approach adopted here is motivated by a dissatisfaction with the historico-political limits of such studies and the structural analyses they assume. These tend to emphasize either the constitutive role of nationalism in the formation of capitalist modernity (Greenfeld 1992) and the inevitable condition from a transition from agricultural to industrial society (Gellner 1983) or else the vital role of nationalism and the nation-state in the sustainability of capitalist modernity in its liberal-democratic, social-democratic, and conservative-democratic versions. Counterbalancing the divisive, polarizing, individualizing, and alienating effects of capitalism and the state, it has been argued, common commitments, homogenous culture, and a sense of unity and solidarity brought into being by nationalism assist capitalist modernity (representative democracy and the “free” market) in reproducing itself (Miller 1995, Calhoun 2007, Karatani 2014, Hazony 2018, Tamir 2019). From this perspective, nation is necessary (Gellner 1983, Jusdanis 2001). That is, it is necessary for a vibrant capitalist modernity, which otherwise is condemned by its internal contradictions to crisis and collapse. That the idea of nation and nationalism cannot be confined to authoritarian and oppressive nationalism is an argument that we share with critical scholars of nationalism studies. However, we diverge from them in our insistence on thinking nation against and beyond capitalism and the state and in divorcing nation from nationalism to discuss critical and emancipatory potentials of nation. Ours is not a case of wishful thinking but rather the kind of approach to nation as called for by the evidence enabled especially by anti-colonial national liberation movements. Though others have discussed, for example, anti-colonial liberation struggles in the 1960s and 1970s and their trans-local politics of connectivity, reimaging political communities “beyond the rigid boundaries of the nation state” or some preconceived identity (Sajed 2019: 246), debates on the progressive imagination of nation are rather scarce. This book, therefore, aims to address this gap. The chapters in this book bring together thinkers and movements from different continents – Africa, Asia, Europe, and (Latin) America – as well as authors from various disciplinary positions with a range of focal points. They are unified

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by their critical search for national imaginations and practices that do not reproduce and require the state and capitalism. In the face of rising authoritariannationalist movements, this project indicates the possibility of a nation-based politics that is rooted in the histories of emancipatory social struggles worldwide. In their elaborate search for non-nationalist forms of nation-based imaginations, claims-making, and social practices in diverse political settings, ranging from neo-colonial Peru and Burkina Faso to Tsarist Russia, the chapters of this volume derive some important lessons. To simplify these by indicating what is common to them, one can broadly argue that a basic difference between nationalist and non-nationalist forms of nation-based politics resides in the ways national sovereignty and the right to self-determination is interpreted and practiced. As can be seen most explicitly in Wilsonian, Leninist, and UN Charter references to “the right of nations to self-determination” (Manela 2007; Getachew 2019), the nation has always been essentially political and served as a locus of a special type of claims-making concerning self-rule. Therefore, there is nothing accidental in that the way that this defining feature of nation is interpreted and practiced serves as a litmus paper to distinguish among different forms of nation-based politics in general and in particular between “passive hegemonic” and “expansive hegemonic” ( Jessop 1983) forms – with the former led by elites, centered on the state, and characterized by a search for homogeneity/unity (Chatterjee 1986) and the latter based on masses, tolerating heterogeneity/pluralities, and involving progressive and even socialist/anarchistic components. The latter is called various names by its practitioners and analysts. It has been dubbed “swadeshi” (self-rule) by Gandhi, “socialist patriotism” by revolutionaries of the “People’s Democracies” in Eastern Europe, “new democracy” by Mao, “nationism” by Kıvılcımlı ([1970] 2014), “nationalitarianism” by Abdel-Malek (1981), “republican patriotism” by Viroli (1995), and “democratic confederalism” by Öcalan (2016), among others. The chapters of the volume provide us with evidence and arguments encouraging us to conclude that the antagonistic differences between nationalist and non-nationalist interpretation of the right of nations to self-determination/ national sovereignty manifest themselves at three levels that are strongly interrelated, each with its origins in critical understandings of the rights of nations to self-determination. These levels comprise (1) the form of national selfdetermination, and specifically the stance toward the state, (2) homogeneity/ heterogeneity of national identity and the construction of collective identities like ethnicity and gender, and (3) class. The form of national self-determination is first and foremost a matter of stance toward the state. In nationalist understanding, the right to self-determination/ national sovereignty is identified with, or, more precisely, limited to the right of nations to form their own nation-states. Expressed thus, the nation is assumed to necessarily and inherently call for the state and vice versa. However, as the contributors of this volume make clear, associating nation with the state and national self-determination with the nation-state is possible only so long as one

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closes one’s eyes to the numerous cases and ways in which nation and national sovereignty as performed have been in open conf lict with the state itself, that is, with its oligarchic form and representative mechanisms. Here, however, the instances of national imaginaries and practices of national self-determination examined are characterized by collective action, direct democracy, self-rule, and grassroots mobilization and cannot be easily represented by or confined to topdown, bureaucratic, representative mechanisms of the nation-state. This is what we can see in the Revolutionary Bolivarianism of the Chávez period, according to which “sovereignty resides in and is not transferable from the pueblo” and was thus practiced directly, through democratically organized councils, communes, and assemblies (Azzellini). We see it in the rejection by Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê; PKK), of the classical, nation-state-centered paradigm of national liberation struggles when preferring to define the “self-organizing capacities of people” as the main criteria of achieving national liberation, as currently materialized in the radical self-government experiments in Rojava ( Jongerden and Gunes). It was evident in the revolutionary struggle against neo-colonialism under the leadership of Thomas Sankara, who conceived of the essence of anti-imperialism in Upper Volta not as a matter of state-building but rather of the social and political empowerment of the laboring masses, women, and excluded ethnicities, which found its symbolic expression in the change of the country’s name from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso – “Land of the Upright People” (Harsch). It has been expressed in José Carlos Mariátegui’s objection to a populist and charismatic leader-based version of anti-imperialist politics and his strong emphasis on the necessity of the active involvement of the Peruvian masses, specifically indigenous people, in political processes as a precondition of their national and social emancipation (Castro). We see it in Alexander Herzen’s divergence from the “paternalistic populism” of Slavophiles with respect to the stance toward the political activism of the peasants and the intensity of opposition to the Tsarist autocracy (Yazıcı Cörüt). The irreconcilability of radical interpretations of the right to self-determination and the bureaucratic, representative nature of the state is manifested also in the politico-theoretical implications of the original “History Thesis” of Hikmet Kıvılcımlı, one of the monumental figures of Turkish Marxism and the patriotic left, who defined the collective action capacity of the masses as the motor engine of historical change with reference to Ibn Khaldun’s theory of asabiyyah (Cörüt). It is evident in the way that a group of ex-insurgents from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de ColombiaEjército del Pueblo; FARC-EP) reinterprets the peace-building and reincorporation process to construct a democratically functioning cooperative that is politically and economically autonomous from neo-liberalism and the Colombian state, thus materializing an almost miniature copy of FARC-EP’s former anti-oligarchic and anti-imperialist conception of national self-determination (Cortés Urquijo and Verschoor). We see it in the fact that the political desire behind the United

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Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union (Brexit) was not progressive, being less an act of self-determination against the “EU empire” than an attempt to return the state, borders, and English hegemony to their former dominance (Clarke). And we see it in the radical Egyptian experiences, with their insistence on the importance of state sovereignty for the attainment of national liberation against imperialism while avoiding the equation of that national liberation with “the veneer of formal state sovereignty” (Ajl). As the cases analyzed here clearly reveal, for national self-determination to be performed beyond the state, the nation also needs be rethought, reimagined, and reworked. Nationalism reconciles national self-determination with the oligarchic form and representative institutions of the state by reifying nation via history, culture, and race to render a coherent object, a unitarian composite, that is, the People-as-One (Lefort 1986), as has recently occurred in the “conf lation of nation, race, and identity” during the Brexit process (Clarke). Thus, nation becomes ready to be represented by the state elites, educated middle classes, and factions of bourgeoisie speaking and acting on behalf of the country, standing for the national interest, culture, and honor. Therefore, it should not be regarded as accidental that radical, nation-based movements going beyond the state and nationalism have always been less resistant to imagining nation in less homogenous and substantial ways, allowing the articulation of pluralities as a requirement of national self-determination. Once nation detaches itself from the problematic of representation and embodies “pure political affirmation” (Neocosmos 2011:188) that actually “does not ‘represent’ anything outside itself ” (190) – as has been practiced in the radical currents of nation-based movements – then the homogeneity of nation no longer informs national perspectives and delimits the horizons of national imaginaries as if written into their very definition. That is precisely the moment when the intersectionality of nation, suppressed in nationalist conceptions of nation, becomes undeniably visible. The more the non-nationalist forms of nation-based movements and theories demystify nation/ national self-determination, convert it into a worldly phenomenon, and try to lay a platform within national space for the voices of the previously suppressed to be heard, then the more urgent and unavoidable does the need to address racial, gendered, and ethnic aspects of nation become. Therefore, non-nationalist nation-based movements and theories require a considered focus in order to do justice to the multi-dimensionality of nation and to appreciate the ways in which elements of this multi-dimensionality might and already do intersect so as to constitute the complex reality of nation. This volume consequently provides its reader with important intersectional analyses of non-nationalist, nation-based experiences and theories, focusing specifically on how nation is articulated with ethnicity, culture, and gender and the implications of that articulation. Examples of this in the present volume include Jongerden and Gunes’ analysis of the ethnically inclusive and feminist core of Abdullah Öcalan’s “democratic nation”; Azzellini’s analysis of the

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revolutionary Bolivarian pueblo; Yazıcı Cörüt’s analysis of the central role the stance taken toward culture and ethnic institutions of the rural masses played in the intellectual and political polarizations around narod of nineteenth-century Russia; Harsch’s analysis of the anti-colonial attempts of Thomas Sankara and the National Council of the Revolution (CNR) in Burkina Faso to advance the social standing of women and also institute an overarching Burkinabè national identity without suppressing ethnic identities or cultural difference; and Castro’s analysis of Mariátegui’s strategic orientation of “incorporat[ing] the indigenous majority, their ways of life and cultural institutions, not as dead weight, but rather as revolutionary resources”. Focusing specifically on class when considering the ways in which the right of nations to self-determination are interpreted and practiced, these may be identified and grouped as either against or for seizing the state apparatus, where these, in turn, correspond to two conf licting stances that we can largely associate with the oppositional interests of laboring and propertied classes. So long as the right to self-determination is conf lated with the issue of seizing and controlling the state apparatus – as per the parochial nationalisms tying nation-based politics to nationalist forms – then the right to self-determination hardly goes beyond its function as an instrument of intra-elite/bourgeois struggles. Essentially, the state itself is oligarchic in its form, and any attempt to limit the right of nations to self-determination to the seizure of state power will tend first to result in replacing a group of non- or “less” native oligarchs (monarchs, colonialists, neo-colonialists, military dictators) with a new group of oligarchs who claim to act on behalf of natives or “real natives”. That is why the motto of nationalist/statist form of national self-determination is to “replace the foreigners” (Fanon [1965] 2007: 105). And, precisely for the same reasons, radical interpretations of the right of nations to self-determination, which avoid reducing self-determination to the problematic of the seizure of state power, have always involved a strong socialist and anarchistic component seeking to invent ways forward into post-capitalism. This is evident in contributions in this volume, specifically in Ajl’s analysis of the history of radical Arab developmental thought, which sought to formulate non-capitalist ways of development with special reference to Maoist experience; in Yazıcı Cörüt’s analysis of Herzen’s populist redefinition of narod as a potential basis of the critique of capitalism and the state; in Castro’s analysis of the Marxism of Mariátegui in which the national and social emancipation of the Peruvian laboring masses, specifically of indigenous population, were two faces of the same phenomenon; and in Jongerden and Gunes’ analysis of the impact of Öcalan’s productive engagement with utopian socialism, specifically the social ecology approach of Bookchin, and his re-formulation of national liberation against the “capitalist modernity”. The contributions here have been grouped under three sections. The first section, entitled “Collective Action, Self-Rule, and Autonomy”, contains discussions of and arguments about the centrality of collective action, self-rule,

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and autonomism in the progressive and radical conceptions of nation. The first chapter is by Joost Jongerden and Cengiz Gunes and looks at the PKK. The focus here is placed on the ideo-political transformation of that party, which is leading what is indisputably one of the most radical national liberation movements of recent times. While the PKK initially subscribed to a typical state-centered understanding of national liberation and aimed at founding a socialist nation-state as the ideal form of self-determination, it has subsequently revised its national liberation paradigm substantially to dissociate the idea of national liberation from the state, following the theoretical insights developed by Öcalan in prison. Jongerden and Gunes provide us not only with a detailed description of the historical background and stages of this transformation but also with a close analysis of the concepts and ideas coined during this transformation. The authors emphasize the conf lict Öcalan diagnosed between “democratic modernity” and “capitalist modernity”, with the former having origins in primitive communism of the Neolithic period and the latter in the statist and hierarchical civilization of the Sumerian period. The political subjectivity corresponding to democratic modernity is “democratic nation … with multiple identities, multiple cultures, and multiple political formations” (Öcalan 2020: 369). The most critical and liberatory aspect of the idea of “democratic nation”, according to Jongerden and Gunes, is the way it reformulates national self-determination as self-organizing/administering capacities beyond the state and pluralizing the idea of the nation. The second article of the first section is İlker Cörüt’s discussion of the original “History Thesis” of Hikmet Kıvılcımlı, who “was the only Turkish Marxist thinker among all generations of Turkish Marxists of his era and even after who went far beyond merely adapting Marxist ideas to the national context of Turkey”. With reference to Morgan’s Ancient Society, Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Khaldun’s Muqaddima, and Marxist theory of productive forces and class struggle, Kıvılcımlı reinterpreted historical materialism to explore the laws of motion of pre-capitalist societies. According to his “History Thesis”, the main dynamic of historical change in the pre-capitalist period “was not class struggle within a society but rather the strong ‘collective action’ of barbarian nomads, who embodied egalitarian and collectivist values of ‘primitive socialist society’, against class-divided civilized societies”. Cörüt problematizes the background of Kıvılcımlı’s failure to develop his “History Thesis” into a radical theory of the nation and asks the following question to discuss the relevance of the “History Thesis” for a rethinking of the nation: “While in many respects the “History Thesis” seems to provide a perfect explanation for the radical potential of the national imagination and movements, why did Kıvılcımlı not attempt to derive any theory of nation from his theory on the decisiveness of asabiyyah, collective action, and communitarian values in the evolution of societies? And, if we read the nation-form into his “History Thesis”, what new insights into nation-form and its radical potential can be reached?”

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After discussing the ideo-political transformation of the national liberation paradigm of the PKK and the implications of the “History Thesis” of Hikmet Kıvılcımlı for radical conceptions of the nation, we move to Latin America and the experiences of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP). Julián Cortés Urquijo and Gerard Verschoor examine the contemporary experiences of former militants of FARC-EP in developing agrarian communities. FARC-EP and other guerrilla movements in Colombia have been at war with the state and paramilitary organizations for over 50 years. A signed peace accord between FARC-EP and the Colombian government in 2016 had to start a new era in which FARC-EP would de-militarize and the political institutions would reform. This transformation process had wide implications for FARC-EP. The signing of the peace accords implied that FARC-EP accepted that it could not accomplish its stated objectives through protracted guerrilla warfare. However, the authors argue, this does not mean that FARC-EP’s 50-year struggle was unsuccessful. In its decades-long war, the FARC-EP not only aimed to conquer the state but also to interact with and build autonomous peasant communities. After the signing of the peace accords, several militants, building on their experiences of building autonomous communities, further developed and created their own grassroots projects and communities, in which, the authors argue, they enact a politics beyond the state. Since the peace process, more than 80 cooperatives composed of ex-insurgents and local peasants have been created in different territories, transforming the ex-insurgents of the FARC-EP into key actors in the development of a solidarity economy. No longer aiming to conquer the state, and critical toward the hierarchical relations constructed in the process of becoming a state, the militants revalued and developed previous experiences of building autonomy for the development of local alternatives in the here and now. The second section of the volume, entitled “Nation, Pueblo, Narod”, is devoted to specifying the distinctive features of nation as they have been imagined and practiced in radical non-nationalist, nation-based movements in diverse geographical settings and historical periods. The first chapter in this section, by Dario Azzellini, which is on another Latin American experience, can also be read as a continuation of the discussions of the first section on collective action, self-rule, and autonomy. Azzellini examines the social transformation pursued in Venezuela under the presidency of Hugo Chávez (1999–2013). Though “Revolutionary Bolivarianism”, the dominant set of ideas and practices for the radical transformation of society in Venezuela, might seem nationalist, Azzellini argues that its historical roots indicate that it is neither an exclusionary homogenizing nation-state nationalism nor a promotion of an interclass national unity. Among the five foundational references we find Simón Bolívar, Venezuelan liberator and general who fought for independence throughout South America and promoted the unification of the continent; his philosophy teacher Simón Rodríguez, who frequented utopian socialist circles; the peasant general of the federal war, Ezequiel Zamora; and the indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan resistance. While critics have portrayed Chávez as a nationalist and sympathizers place

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him in the tradition of the French Revolution, Azzellini examines the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela from a different perspective. Contrary to much of the writings on Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution, this chapter does not examine Revolutionary Bolivarianism by using definitions from European thinking; rather, it looks at it as a revolutionary current that started to take shape in the guerrilla movements of the 1960s in Venezuela and Latin America and that sought to redefine “state” and “polity” on the basis of the self-organizing capacities of people. This makes Revolutionary Bolivarianism resonate with various forms of what is referred to as constituent power: the communard and councildemocracy tradition of socialism, indigenous forms of communal organization, and the experiences of the self-organization of runaway slaves. In his chapter, Azzellini examines the Bolivarian concept of “the people”, pueblo. Understood as an open category constituted in struggle, pueblo is a diverse community not “predetermined by social status, ethnicity, language, nationality, or any other category”. In line with the idea of a people as an identity shaped in political struggles, the chapter takes a closer look at the council experience as a form of building power alongside and independent of the state. The chapter concludes that this form of self-government is the most important legacy of the revolutionary experience in Venezuela. The next contribution of this section takes us to the Brexit process. At the center of John Clarke’s discussion stands a fact that has become undeniably visible in the Brexit process: the United Kingdom is not as united as it might seem in a “‘Westminster’-centered view of a unitary state”; rather, it is shaped by the interplay of the “divergent nationalisms” of the English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh nations. Clarke focuses on different but interrelated aspects of the Brexit process. Behind Brexit he diagnoses an authoritarian, populist desire fueled by a “sense of loss”, which is mainly related to the post-imperial character of English nationalism, neo-liberal globalization, and migration-related changes in cultural structure and lifestyle. The post-imperial character of reactionary English nationalism, Clarke argues, has two parts: “[t]he first concerns the loss of Empire (the condition of Great Britain’s ‘Greatness’); the second concerns the loss of English hegemony over the United Kingdom (and its conf lation of English and British)”. Clarke establishes Brexit as a reactionary response to the end of internal colonialism and an attempt to restore the collapsing English hegemony over other nations composing United Kingdom. He concludes that “Brexit has dramatically reopened the ‘national question’, bringing into play differently imagined and embodied nations beyond the nominally ‘United’ Kingdom”. Among many other insights into the Brexit process, the one which is particularly important to our search for progressive forms of nation-based politics is Clarke’s revelation that the political desire behind Brexit is, unlike the Lexit argument, not available to be instrumentalized for progressive purposes due to its authoritarian and reactionary nature. However, Clarke is careful not to identify Englishness with reactionary English nationalism, and he underlines the possibility of imagining Englishness and Britishness in progressive ways.

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The concluding chapter of the section is from Gözde Yazıcı Cörüt. She discusses the ideo-political implications of different interpretations of narod, “the people”, by the actors of main intellectual and political constellations ref lecting the social tensions and identity crisis of nineteenth-century imperial Russia. Identifying the nobility, which was increasingly marginalized in the process of the modernization of the state apparatus and the emergence of a professional bureaucratic sector, as the main social actor behind the multiplying intellectual groupings of the nineteenth century, she focuses on two main intellectual circles – Slavophiles and Westernizers – and on the rise of populism initiated by Herzen’s formulation of “Russian Socialism”. She reveals that Slavophiles glorified peasants, specifically the peasant communes, as the communitarian, harmonic essence of narod and as “the bearers of the ‘Russian soul’”. The Slavophiles defended a program of preserving the existence and autonomy of the communes and asserted that the “Russian soul” embedded in them stood against the abstract Western rationalism imposed by capitalism and imperial bureaucracy. However, “as representatives of the hereditary nobility”, Yazıcı Cörüt argues, “the Slavophiles remained firmly attached to the maintenance of the social order in order to keep their traditional and economic statuses intact” and did not want the involvement of the peasants in the political process that, they thought, might rationalize/Westernize the peasants’ truly Russian ways of being. The stance of the Westernizers was almost diametrically opposed to that of the Slavophiles. While Slavophiles were in search of ways of limiting the further Westernization of the Russian countryside, Westernizers emphasized the need to deepen and quicken the reforms as they were key to the emancipation of Russia. Yazıcı Cörüt argues that Alexander Herzen reinvented narod to attempt a radical synthesis of the Slavophiles’ emphasis on the communitarian potential of peasant communes with the Westernizers’ liberal/libertarian emphasis on the Enlightenment. It was Herzen’s reinvention of narod that laid the ground for the emergence and development of Russian populism/socialism. “Anti-Colonial Nation” is the third and final section of the volume, and it consists of contributions on anti-imperialist, anti-colonial thought and experiences in the Arab World, Burkina Faso, and Peru, respectively. In the first contribution in this section, Max Ajl discusses Arab nationalism and the idea of self-reliant development, reassessing the idea of a “synergy between the state, sovereignty, nationalism, and development on the periphery of the world system”. Challenging the idea that “history has surpassed the national question”, Ajl makes the argument that national liberation is “less a failed than an aborted process”. In his contribution, Ajl takes the history of radical Arab developmental thought as a lens through which he “re-examine[s] the state, nationalism, and internationalism, and the horizons and afterlives of national liberation”. He argues that the denial of state sovereignty is at the core of the political history of underdevelopment. At the same time, he argues, self-determination, as state sovereignty and a treasured achievement of anti-colonial and national liberation struggles, has been pushed to the margins of social theory. In social theory, the

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world of today is predominantly imagined as being composed of a f luid network. In this world composed of a scatter of nodes, the state has decomposed and the center-periphery relations, against which background capital accumulation was thought to take place, have become obsolete. This theorization makes the question of the state and the question of nation appear less relevant or even irrelevant. Ajl critiques this social theory imagination as methodologically anti-materialist and ahistorical, while uncovering important experiences in the history of Arab nationalism and its view on the state as a site of struggle for the creation of novel pathways for anti- and post-colonial development. His contribution zooms in on the thought of the former Egyptian Minister of Planning, Ismail Sabri Abdallah, a communist intellectual who spent many years in prison, and his development strategy oriented toward peasants. The next contribution in this section moves us on to revolution and nation building under the revolutionary government of Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso, a country that experienced an intense period of rethinking nation building during the mid-1980s. Ernest Harsch argues that although the governing National Council of the Revolution (CNR) under President Thomas Sankara lasted only a few years, its reign marked the beginning of a lasting process in which the country’s national identity was radically transformed. Previously, under French colonial rule and the first decades of independence, Haute-Volta (Upper Volta) demonstrated few attributes of national cohesion or even a notable movement for state sovereignty. The advent of the CNR, which aspired to transform the country’s extremely underdeveloped economic and social structures, also set about forging a new identity. That process was exemplified by changing the country’s name from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso. It was both an African name (rather a geographical term expressed in the former colonial tongue) and a pan-territorial composite drawn from different indigenous languages. That change, combined with strong promotion of the country’s dozens of cultures, consciously aimed for greater inclusiveness. The CNR revolutionary project of nation building was constructed on top of and not instead of distinct ethnic identities, and thus it was distinctly pan-ethnic with the overall aim to turn a subjugated former colony, divided along ethnic and regional fault lines, into a confident and proud citizenry. The veritable “imagined community” set to be constructed by Sankara was not based on the assimilation of different groups in a new “national identity” but on the articulation of diverse identities. His vision, which continues to inspire many, consciously redefined the idea of nation from unity as one to unity in diversity, and it carried the promise of a post-colonial reconstruction of autonomy and development. The final contribution of the volume is from Juan E. De Castro, who takes us back to the early decades of twentieth-century Peru to specify the distinct ideopolitical principles of the anti-imperialist and socialist orientation of José Carlos Mariátegui. Castro compares and contrasts Mariátegui’s stance with the populist anti-imperialism of Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, who was the founder of antiimperialist alliance APRA (American Revolutionary Alliance). Castro compares

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and contrasts Mariátegui and Haya through a close examination of their respective political routes, which diverged after the transformation of APRA into a nationalist party, the Nationalist Liberating Party (Partido Nacionalista Libertador; PNL). Castro shows that Mariátegui withdrew his support from Haya despite the programmatic similarity between APRA and the PNL. Both were against US imperialism, were proponents of the nationalization of land and industry, and defended the unity of oppressed nations, specifically those in Latin America. Mariátegui’s objection was to the Latin American caudillo tradition of politics in which people are reduced to a passive mass in need of the heroic actions of a charismatic leader or a “secular messiah” to achieve its emancipation. Mariátegui was a Marxist and privileged doctrine over charisma and mass action over individual heroism. One can see clear parallels between Mariátegui’s emphasis on the role of mass action in the national and social emancipation of Peru, the “self-organizing capacity” of Öcalan, and the “collective action” of Kıvılcımlı. Another major difference between Haya and Mariátegui, according to Castro, pertained to their views of the nexus between the local/national and the global. Mariátegui’s search for ways of ensuring the involvement of the masses in revolutionary struggle led him to accommodate, in theory and politics, the specificities of the national reality of Peru. This was evident in his attempt to “incorporate the indigenous majority, their ways of life and cultural institutions, not as dead weight, but rather as revolutionary resources”. However, unlike Haya, Mariátegui never subscribed to any version of “‘Indo-American’ exceptionalism”. As Castro carefully put it, Mariátegui situated the issue of Peruvian subordination in the context of subordination of oppressed nations to imperialism. We would like to end the introduction with a few remarks on the fields to which this volume potentially contributes. Among many discussions to which the volume may empirically and theoretically contribute, those centered on leftpopulism need to be boldly underlined. We currently have a growing body of academic research focusing on the potentials and limits of contemporary leftpopular movements (Mouffe 2018; Stavrakis & Katsambekis 2014; March 2017). This is mainly in response to the spectacular rise of Euro-American left-popular movements in the last decade, such as in Greece (Syriza), Spain (Podemos), the US (Democratic Socialism led by Sanders), the UK (Corbyn’s Labor Party), and France (Insoumise, led by Mélenchon).Even though there is no consensus on the relationship between nation-form and populism (Is populism a continuation of nationalism and, as such, a specific variant of nation-based politics, or is it an entirely different modality of politics?), and scholars of left-populism studies are likely to associate nation-form with nationalism, the volume reveals in mainly two ways that left-populism scholars have much to gain by an engagement with the lessons of non-nationalist forms of nation-based movements. With the contributions focusing on national imaginations and practices that go beyond the state and capitalism, the volume includes lessons left-populism scholars may draw on in order to have a better understanding of the parallels between the anti-oligarchic, anti-technocratic discourse of left-populism and radical interpretations

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of the right of nation to self-determination/national sovereignty. The volume also reinforces scholars’ awareness that the articulation of nation/people within progressive politics is not a phenomenon of recent decades, limited to the EuroAmerican zone; rather, it has a history of its own specifically embedded in the struggles against colonialism and neo-colonialism. Therefore, the editors expect the volume to contribute to intellectual exchanges between critical nationalism and left-populism studies.

References Abdel-Malek, A. (1981). Social Dialectics: Nation and Revolution, vol. 2. New York: SUNY Press. Al-Ali, N. and Pratt, N. (2011). Between nationalism and women’s rights: The Kurdish women’s movement in Iraq. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 4(3), pp. 339–355. Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bailey, N. and Winchester, N. (2012). Islands in the stream: Revisiting methodological nationalism under conditions of globalization. Sociology, 46(4), pp. 712–727. Beck, U. (2007). The cosmopolitan condition: Why methodological nationalism fails. Theory, Culture and Society, 24(7–8), pp. 286–290. Brubaker, R. (1992). Citizenship and Nationhood in Germany and France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Calhoun, C. (2007). Nations Matter: Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream. London: Routledge. Chatterjee, P. (1986). Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? London: Zed for the United Nations University. Connor, W. (1994). Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Denitch, B. (1994). Ethnic Nationalism: The Tragic Death of Yugoslavia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Fanon, F. (2007). The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Getachew, A. (2019). Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Greenfeld, L. (1992). Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hazony, Y. (2018). The Virtue of Nationalism. New York: Basic Books. Hobsbawn, E. (1990). Nations and Nationalism Since 1780. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hobsbawn, E. (1996). Ethnicity and nationalism in Europe today. In: G. Balakrishnan, ed., Mapping the Nation. London: Verso, pp. 255–266. Jessop, B. (1983). Accumulation strategies, state forms, and hegemonic projects. Kapitalistate, 10, pp. 89–111. Johnston, R.J., Knight, D. and Kofman, E. (2015). Nationalism, Self-Determination and Political Geography. London: Routledge.

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Jusdanis, G. (2001). The Necessary Nation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Karatani, K. (2014). The Structure of World History: From Modes of Production to Modes of Exchange. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Keitner, C.J. (2007). The Paradoxes of Nationalism: The French Revolution and Its Meaning for Contemporary Nation-Building. Albany: State University of New York Press. Kıvılcımlı, H. ([1970] (2014). 27 Mayıs ve Yön Hareketi’nin sınıfsal eleştirisi. İstanbul: Derleniş Yayınları. Kohn, H. (1945). The Idea of Nationalism: A Study of Its Origins and Background. London: Macmillan. Köksal, Y. (2010). Urban space and nationalism: Changing local networks in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire. In: P.N. Diamandouros, T. Dragonas and C. Keyder, eds., Spatial Conceptions of the Nation: Modernizing Geographies in Greece and Turkey. London: IB Taurus, pp. 35–51. Lefort, C. (1986). The Political Forms of Modern Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Manela, E. (2007). The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. March, L. (2017). Left and right populism compared: The British case. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 19(2), pp. 282–303. Miller, D. (1995). On Nationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mojab, S. (1996). Nationalism and feminism: The case of Kurdistan. Simone de Beauvoir Institute Bulletin. Women and Nationalism, 16, pp. 65–73. Mouffe, C. (2018). For a Left Populism. London: Verso. Neocosmos, M. (2011). The nation and its politics: Fanon, emancipatory nationalism, and political sequences. In: N.C. Gibson, ed., Living Fanon. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 187–199. Nimni, E. (2007). National-cultural autonomy as an alternative to minority territorial nationalism. Ethnopolitics, 6(3), pp. 345–364. Öcalan, A. (2016). Democratic Nation. Neus: Mesopotamian Publishers. Öcalan, A. (2020). The Sociology of Freedom: Manifesto of the Democratic Civilization, vol. III. Oakland, CA: PM Press. Sajed, A. (2019). Re-remembering third worldism: An affirmative critique of national liberation in Algeria. Middle East Critique, 28(3), pp. 243–260. Schoffeleers, M. and Meijers, D. (1978). Religion, Nationalism and Economic Action: Critical Questions on Durkheim and Weber. Assen: Van Gorcum. Smith, A.D. (1983). Nationalism and classical social theory. The British Journal of Sociology, 34(1), pp. 19–38. Smith, A.D. (1994). Gastronomy of geology: The role of nationalism in the reconstruction of nations. Nations and Nationalism, 1(1), pp. 3–23. Stavrakakis, Y. and Katsambekis, G. (2014). Left-wing populism in the European periphery: The case of SYRIZA. Journal of Political Ideologies, 19(2), pp. 119–142. Tamir, Y. (2019). Why Nationalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University. Viroli, M. (1995). For Love of Country. An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

PART I

Collective action, self-rule, and autonomy

1 A DEMOCRATIC NATION The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the idea of nation beyond the state Joost Jongerden and Cengiz Gunes

Introduction At a court hearing on June 18, 1981, Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Central Committee member Mazlum Doğan corrected the interrogating judge with the following words: Let me say this: as I have stated before, the PKK’s program does not say it wants to establish a Kurdish state on a Marxist–Leninist basis. It wants the formation of an independent, democratic, united country, and the state will be national, democratic, and there will be an administration in which the people will govern themselves. (Pirtûk û Wêje 2017) Mazlum Doğan, a celebrated martyr within the PKK, had started to study economics at Hacettepe University in Ankara in 1974. Shortly after he arrived in Ankara, he became a key person within a group of Kurds and Turks, most of them students who had taken part in an extended process of group formation that had started in 1972–1973 and resulted in the establishment of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, PKK) in November 1978 ( Jongerden and Akkaya 2011, Gunes 2012, Jongerden and Akkaya 2012). In a preparatory meeting on the group’s political approach in Antep in September 1977, the leading figure in the group, Abdullah Öcalan, had declared in a similar vein: “We are waging a struggle for the liberation of humanity not for nationalist purpose. We aimed at applying Marxism-Leninism in Turkey and Kurdistan … From the beginning we did not emerge exclusively for only one nationality” (Akkaya 2016: 170). Though initially the main political objectives of the PKK could be summarized as 1) the unification of Kurdistan and 2) the transformation of Kurdish

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society through the elimination of relations of exploitation, the realization of these objectives was considered to be dependent on a process of state formation (PKK 1978). In the course of the 1980s and 1990s, however, this classical model of national liberation, in which a social revolution would follow the conquering or construction of a state, became a subject of investigation, critique, and self-critique within the PKK (Akkaya 2016). The critique involved an assessment of the gains of national liberation movements, which did not deliver on their promises, and the developments within, among others, the Soviet Union. While in Marx’s work, the abolition of the state and its replacement by a new political power is an aim of social evolution (Draper 1970), the state had become increasingly powerful in the Soviet Union, creating a form of state-capitalism. The self-critique included the PKK’s orientation toward the idea of the state and the reproduction of traditional gender hierarchies within its own ranks. Following the capture of Abdullah Öcalan in Nairobi, Kenya and his subsequent imprisonment in Turkey in February 1999, this process of critique and self-critique took a constructive turn: critique and self-critique became connected to ideological reorientation and a program for political action ( Jongerden 2019). Through the writing of his defense texts and drawing on numerous thinkers from Murray Bookchin to Ferdinand Braudel and from Marie Mies to Judith Butler, Öcalan was able to develop a form of politics that no longer hinged on the idea of the state but was based on the self-organizing capacities of people, through which not only the Kurdish issue could be solved politically, but the whole Middle-East transformed (Gunes 2019b). This new political idea became the most visible and received the most international and scholarly attention in the way it became expressed in Rojava, the western part of Kurdistan located in the north of Syria. When the regime collapsed in 2012, a network of local councils became the foundation of a self-administrative structure (Knapp et al. 2014). However, similar working practices were developing across Kurdistan in Bakur (Southeast Turkey), Rojhelat (Nothwest Iran), and Başur (North Iraq) (Akkaya and Jongerden 2013, Yarkin 2015, Gunes and Gürer 2018, Gunes 2019a, Jongerden 2019). In this chapter, we will discuss this political proposal and working practice as a reformulation of the right to self-determination beyond the state and nation-state form. The article provides a general overview and is based on previous research projects and work from the authors (Akkaya and Jongerden 2011, Jongerden and Akkaya 2011, Akkaya and Jongerden 2012, Casier and Jongerden 2012, Jongerden and Akkaya 2012, Jongerden and Akkaya 2019, Jongerden 2017, 2019, Gunes 2012, 2019a, 2019b). We will first discuss the background to the Kurdish question: the emergence of Turkish nationalism in the early decades of the 1900s in the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey on basis of the idea of nationalism in 1923. This will be followed by a brief discussion of the emergence of Kurdish resistance to the Turkish state from the 1960s onwards. In the paragraphs that follow we will focus on the PKK and its ideological reorientation, in which it rejected state formation and developed

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a political project based on the self-organizing capacities of people, and how this created the political possibility of a nation beyond nationalism and statism.

Backgrounds: A fading empire and ethno-political engineering The Armistice of Mudros in 1918 had implied a surrender of the Ottoman Empire to the French and British empires and resulted in its de facto partitioning and the occupation of its capital city, Istanbul (Zürcher 2004). Remnants of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), an umbrella organization in which Turkish nationalists became the dominant faction, started to organize a resistance against this surrender to the allied forces. Yet the leadership of CUP had a damaged reputation. Its inner circle had led the Ottoman Empire and the peasant population into a disastrous war with Russia; it had also initiated a series of processes, including mass deportations, mass executions, and the creation of famine, which had resulted in the genocide of the Armenian population (Ungor 2012). Mustafa Kemal [Atatürk], a distinguished military officer, became the leading officer of the resistance against British and French occupation. Though a former CUP member himself, he had sufficient distance from the wartime leadership, and his success on the battlefield made him the leader of an emerging national resistance movement in Anatolia (Zürcher 2004). When, under his leadership, the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed on October 29, 1923, on the lands east of what had been considered the heartland of the Empire, it was depopulated and impoverished. Many peasants had perished as fodder in the Ottoman wars, while genocide had decimated the Armenian population in Anatolia from a couple of million to about 65,000, and the Greek-Christians had been reduced from two million to 120,000 as a result of a League of Nations sanctioned population exchange (Ari 1995). In terms of religious and ethnic diversity, the main groups were Alevi and Sunni Muslims, Turks, and Kurds (Zürcher 2004). Under the reign of Mustafa Kemal [Atatürk], his comrades in arms, and their Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) a process of nationstate building started. Modeled on the idea of nationalism, a political concept holding that the borders of political units (state) and cultural units (nation) should coincide, a politics of conversion had to turn Muslims into Turks. This conversion was referred to with such terms as “missionary work” and “internal colonization” ( Jongerden 2007). As a result of the equation of citizenship with a Turkish cultural identity, the existence of other cultural identifications became perceived as an existential threat to the new state. Cultural difference became defined as a security issue, and the Kurdish language and expressions of a distinct Kurdish cultural identity were banned. In order to make use of citizenship rights, people had to describe themselves as Turks (Barkey and Fuller 1998). Since the first decades of the republic, a policy based on assimilation into what was considered a superior Turkish culture and a physical elimination of those who resisted was implemented (Bruinessen 1994). Thus it was in a context of

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harsh repression and cultural genocide that the PKK emerged between the two military coups of 1971 and 1980 ( Jongerden and Akkaya 2011, Gunes 2012).

Nation-state identity politics and its responses: The emergence of the PKK The harsh repression in the 1920s and 1930s and failed attempts by Kurdish leaders to resist political submission, military occupation, and cultural denial had been followed by years of “silence” (Bozarslan 2008). Inf luenced by the resumption of the Kurdish struggle in Iraq under the leadership of Mulla Mustafa Barzani in 1961, a new generation of Kurdish activists emerged, organized around cultural and political magazines. It was from among these circles that the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Turkey (Türkiye Kürdistan Demokrat Partisi, TKDP) was established in 1965, while many other activists were active in the Workers’ Party of Turkey (Türkiye İşçi Partisi, TİP) (Gunes 2019a). Despite their different orientations, activists of nationalist TKDP and socialist TİP were able to work together in mobilizing the Kurdish population in 1967 in a series of protest meetings against “ethno-nationalist suppression and exploitation by the Turkish state elite and dominant classes” (Gundogan 2015: 389). With Kurdish nationalism and socialist struggles on the rise in the 1960s and early 1970s, the PKK emerged from among university students in Ankara in 1972–1973. Most of the students were from modest backgrounds, and some of them had entered university as a result of a scholarship program. Frequent meetings and group discussions contributed to the carving out of a distinctive ideology and the forging of kindred spirits in the period 1973–1978, a process of group formation that resulted in the establishment of the PKK on November 27, 1978 ( Jongerden and Akkaya 2011, Jongerden and Akkaya 2012). This process of group formation took place against a marginalization of the parliamentary TİP and a crackdown of the revolutionary left, which reached its peak in the military regime installed with the 1971 coup. Over the course of the 1980s, the PKK would develop into the only revolutionary political party of significance in Turkey that struggled for Kurdish political rights and the establishment of an independent Kurdistan, attracting Kurdish activists many of whom were previously active within rival Kurdish political parties. Most of these Kurdish political parties, established and active in the 1970s, had not survived the coup of 1980. They either fell apart – like Tekoşîn, Kawa, and Rizgarî/Ala Rizgarî – or were pushed into insignificance – like TKDPKUK, TKDP-KİP and TKSP-PSK. Though the coup and the severe repression unleashed after the military takeover in 1980 was an important factor, most of these parties were already weakened as a result of sectarian cleavages, which had initiated a process of separation and disintegration of the parties preceding the 1980 coup ( Jongerden & Akkaya 2019). This sectarianism was partly an effect of cleavages between the two main Kurdish parties in Iraq, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which

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were involved in a struggle for survival, and partly an effect of disagreement about who or what represented “true socialism” with the Soviet Union, China, and Albania as the beacons (Gunes 2019b, Jongerden and Akkaya 2019). The revolutionary left in Turkey, also prone to a sectarianism that had led to the scornful comment that it was growing by splitting up, was moreover weakened by the inf luence of Kemalism. Its rhetoric of anti-Americanism and its adherence to an independent Turkey was nationalism mistaken for anti-imperialism. Unable to radically break with nationalism and recognize the subordination of Kurds on the basis of their cultural identity, the left could not develop into a genuine force of opposition: The radical left in Turkey, that is, was crucially defined (through Kemalism) by the same force (colonialism) it was fighting to be free from (i.e., the oppression of a dominant class empowered by/as a controlling state). How could the left advance a viable political position outside of Kemalism if [it] was unable to shake off what was an essentially colonialist ideology? ( Jongerden and Akkaya 2012) Mihri Belli, an important ideologue within the revolutionary left in the 1960s and 1970s, believed in a reconciliation of the revolutionary movement with Kemalist ideology through a coalition of workers and peasants and the left-leaning section of the military. It was thought that militant action could create a situation in which radical officers would seize power and form a leftist junta (Samim 1981: 70–71, Kaypakkaya 2014: 357). Muzaffer Erdost, an ideologue within the revolutionary left, f lirted with Turkish nationalism, arguing that it was imperialism that was weakened by the development of nationalism, not socialism (Lipovsky 1992: 111–112). Others, too, within the leftist movement, such as Hikmet Kıvılcımlı,1 thought of the “progressive military” as a natural partner. Hikmet Kıvılcımlı had tried desperately to contact the so-called “progressive” military junta that came to power in 1960, hoping to work together with them, attempts which were in vain (Ünal 1998). Yet most of the left looked with suspicion and disinterest to the resistance of the Kurds ( Jongerden 2017). While the left had thought progressive officers in the army could play a role in the process toward revolutionary change,2 it also insisted on the submission of a cultural identity to class identity. In practice, this implied a submission of Kurdish identity to Turkish identity and a denial of the daily experience of humiliation and suffering of millions of Kurds in Turkey. The insistence on class unity by most of the revolutionary left implied a blatant denial of the humiliation and dehumanization that Kurds in Turkey lived through and a turning a blind eye to the concerted efforts of the state to destroy their cultural identity. Those active in the network that would establish the PKK, however, considered the submission of the struggle for Kurdish rights to Turkish class struggle as chauvinist and denialist and rejected the view that there was only Turkey, no Kurdistan, and only a (Turkish) working class, no Kurds. They argued that the submission of Kurdistan

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and the Kurds was military, cultural, and economic and that the challenge was to develop not only a post-capitalist but also a postcolonial humanity. Given the narrow space for political action, the harsh repression, and the securitization of the Kurdish issue, armed struggle became a principal means in the Kurds’ struggle for a post-capitalist and postcolonial humanity.The 1980s and 1990s were highly active years in the PKK’s struggle as the band of guerrillas it trained in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley in the early 1980s quickly grew into a disciplined guerrilla army over the course of the late 1980s and early 1990s. In this period, the military attacks the PKK carried out against the Turkish state spread over a large area covering much of the Kurdish heartlands in Turkey. It established a well-organized network among the Kurdish diaspora communities in Western Europe, where it was able to organize popular political mobilizations in support of Kurdish rights in Turkey. The human and financial resources of the diaspora Kurdish community that it was able to harness enabled it to transform itself into a vocal political movement in a short space of time. Although the PKK experienced several significant setbacks in its struggle, including heavy military losses during the early 1990s and the capture and imprisonment of its leader in February 1999, it managed to persist and come back after virtual defeat.

Beyond the nation-state: The PKK’s paradigm change From its inception, the PKK was not an orthodox political party. While most of the parties on the Turkish and Kurdish left fought battles and split over which country – the Soviet Union, China, or Albania – represented the true way to socialism, the PKK did not enter this sectarian battle. The party was mainly concerned with understanding the socialist struggle under the conditions in which they lived, which implied the development of their understanding of the reality in Turkey and Kurdistan (Cemil Bayık and Rıza Altun, personal communication October 30, 2014). While in the first years, the organization bypassed the question of the right model by considering all experiences as part of a socialist heritage of struggle, it later formulated a critique of real or actually existing socialism. This was not a critique of one particular model but one in which Öcalan tried to identify a general principle behind the failure of socialist struggles in the twentieth century. In his speeches devoted to socialism (most delivered on the occasion of May 1) in the 1980s (Akkaya 2016), Öcalan started to develop a critique of the state, arguing that the development of a “bureaucratic state” under “real existing socialism” had resulted in alienation and subjugation (Öcalan 1999a: 13–14). Furthermore, as Akkaya argues, referring to the PKK’s 3rd congress in 1986 (Öcalan 1993), this critique did not come with a turn to dogmatism or liberalism but with a search for a new form of socialism (Akkaya 2016: 311). The rethinking of socialism through a state critique became a recurrent theme. At the PKK’s 5th congress in 1995, Öcalan discussed the contradictory relation between the state and socialism (Öcalan 1995). In short, by the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, Öcalan was already searching for a “new socialism” based on a societal transformation coming from below. Following his imprisonment in

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1999, state critique and the development of a political sphere independent from the state became a key theme. By 2004, Öcalan and the PKK had reached the firm conviction that the only way to overcome capitalist modernity is to develop a new understanding of modernity (Kongra-Gel 2004). In the political transformation of the PKK, the role of its leader Abdullah Öcalan is decisive, and without understanding his thought, political changes within the PKK are difficult to comprehend. His ideological authority goes back to the house meetings organized in the early 1970s, preceding the establishment of the party. In the meetings, Öcalan lectured and discussed the Kurdish issue and the failure of the revolutionary left whose leaders were either killed in confrontations with the military, executed, or tortured to death.3 Trying to learn from the defeat of the revolutionary left in the 1960s and early 1970s and the military and political struggle of the PKK in the 1980s and 1990s, Öcalan assumed both the tactical and strategic leadership of the PKK and determined its ideological orientation. The latter he developed in his speeches and writings. After his imprisonment in 1999 and while preparing his defense, Öcalan was able to further develop his political thought. The state critique became a focal point in his analysis, and Öcalan radically reformulated the PKK’s objectives and political practice based on an ideological reorientation he developed in his defense texts. Öcalan’s defenses can be grouped into 1) those submitted to the Turkish courts and 2) those submitted to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, France and to a court in Athens (in a case concerning his expulsion from Greece). In the first texts Öcalan rejected claims for an independent Kurdish state. The democratic solution option, in general as well as in the case of the Kurdish question, is the only option. Separation is neither possible nor required. The interests of the Kurds definitely lie in a democratic union with Turkey. If the democratic solution is duly implemented, it would be a more successful and realistic model than autonomy and federation. (Öcalan 1999b: 32) This initial articulation of the democratic solution put forward the view that the Kurdish question can be solved through the democratization of the republic within the territorial integrity of Turkey and by removing the legal obstacles to Kurdish language rights and cultural development and expression. In his second group of defense texts, submitted to the ECHR in 2001 and 2004, Öcalan continued to elaborate on his critique of the state, including the socialist experiments, arguing that liberation cannot be achieved by means of state-building but rather by the deepening of democracy.

Re-grounding politics: Öcalan’s Democratic Modernity Thesis At the time of its formation in the 1970s, the PKK took revolutionary struggles elsewhere as a relevant horizon for its own orientation. The October Revolution

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in Russia, the revolution in China, the resistances in Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, Eritrea, and other countries and regions around the world were all looked upon as part of a common heritage of the oppressed. Yet the socialist and national liberation movements did not fulfill their promise and, toward the end of the 1980s, the self-declared socialist alternative, the Soviet Union, collapsed. This formed an important background for a reexamination of the idea of socialism and national liberation struggle, eventually resulting in a critique of the state, which took place within the PKK following Öcalan’s critique. [The PKK] examined all the national liberation struggles. They liberated, waged big battles, millions were martyred, and eventually they won, but the gains were minimal. They reached their targets but could not realise their principles… Adding to the collapse of socialism, they [the Soviets] positioned themselves as [the] alternative. The Soviets had believed that they would only come to an end when the world came to an end, and this affected their mentality. We started a re-examination. When we were established, we took our inspiration more from struggles elsewhere than from the resistance movements in recent Kurdish history, which had all ended in defeat, thus affecting PKK thinking. I mean, we took them [the national liberation movements] as examples, we were affected by these movements when we started our struggle, but these struggles did not bring what they should have brought. In fact, they went backwards and accepted what they had previously refused. So, you see, there had to be something wrong. This demanded a re-examination. The emergence of a new paradigm [within the PKK] is very much inf luenced by this. (Duran Kalkan, Personal Communication October 28, 2014) Öcalan’s critique of the state as the pivotal element became a matter of contestation within the PKK. In 2004, Osman Öcalan and Nizamettin Taş, members of the Presidential Council of the PKK, announced the establishment of a new political party, the Patriotic Democratic Party of Kurdistan (Partiya Welatparêzên Demokrat ên Kurdistan, PWD). The new party rejected the new paradigm of nonstatist self-organization, and a separation within the PKK took place between those who wanted to develop a new praxis based on the ideological reformulation made by Öcalan and those who wanted to develop and adhere to the idea of establishing an “independent state”. This new party, however, ceased to exist shortly after its establishment, while the PKK continued its process of transformation, ideologically, politically, and organizationally. In the search for an alternative politics that did not take the state as its main objective, Öcalan engaged with the work of a variety of thinkers, including “the libertarian social ecologist Murray Bookchin, feminist political theorists, such as Judith Butler, and leftist Foucauldians and critical Marxists” in his theorization of democratic modernity (Happel 2006: xv). In particular, in the work of Murray Bookchin, Öcalan found the ideas through which he could give a positive

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systematic to his search for a political practice beyond the state. In his “prison notes” – summaries of talks between Öcalan and his lawyers – Öcalan started to refer to Bookchin as early as 2002. On August 28, 2002, Öcalan recommends Bookchin’s idea of “municipalism” to the municipalities that were administered by the then pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (Halkın Demokratik Partisi, HADEP). In the prison notes of October 27, 2004, Öcalan repeated this suggestion. “The world view for which I stand,” Öcalan says later that year in a meeting with his lawyer “is close to that of Bookchin”. In the prison notes, recommendations are made to read Bookchin’s Ecology of Freedom, Urbanization Without Cities, and Remaking Society. Bookchin, who Öcalan referred to as his teacher, differentiates between politics and statecraft (see Akkaya and Jongerden 2013). Following in the footsteps of Peter Kropotkin, he differentiates between two different (historical) models. The first model, which he refers to as the Hellenic model, stands for a participatory-democratic form of politics to which Bookchin finds himself close. The second, which he rejects, he refers to as the Roman model, which stands for a centralist and statist form (White 2008: 159). While the Roman model has become the dominant form in modern society, informing the American and French constitutionalists of the eighteenth century, the Athenian model exists as a counter- and underground current (Kropotkin 1947 [1897]), finding expression in the Paris Commune of 1871, the councils (soviets) in the springtime of the revolution in Russia in 1917, and the Spanish Revolution in 1936. The Hellenic model has an active citizenship; the statist, centralized Roman model has a herd of subjects (Bookchin 1991: 11). Similar to the distinction made by Kropotkin and Bookchin, but taking a longer historical perspective, Öcalan distinguishes between two modernities that have their roots in the Neolithic and Sumerian period (10,000–4,000 BCE). These are a democratic modernity and a capitalist modernity. While democratic modernity has its roots in the primitive communalism and equality in the Neolithic period, capitalist modernity emerged from the state hierarchies and the production of economic inequalities that emerged in the Sumerian period (Öcalan 2013). Against this historical background of a contradiction between two modernities – a capitalist and a democratic modernity – Öcalan developed his political program for a strengthening of democratic modernity around two interlinked approaches: one for a democratization of the state and the other for the development of self-organizing capacities and administration beyond the state. The first approach was translated into the project of a “democratic republic” that aimed at a disassociation of demos and ethnos, of citizenship and ethnicity, and the reconstitution of the Republic of Turkey on the basis of a civil definition of citizenship.The second approach entailed the development of self-administration and was articulated around three projects: democratic autonomy, democratic confederalism, and democratic nation. Around these three projects, he believed, the problems of political subordination, cultural assimilation, and economic exploitation could be addressed. These projects formed the foundation on which the PKK reoriented

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and reorganized itself and through which the particular demands of Kurds could be articulated in a universal language of democracy. Let’s start our explanation with the concepts of democratic autonomy and democratic confederalism. Democratic autonomy refers to the right of collectivities of people to determine their own fate and make decisions about their own affairs. This principle is not limited to any collective identity and applies to ethnic, cultural, linguistic, or gender identities. Democratic confederalism refers to the democratic organizational form in which this self-determination takes place, namely through assemblies or councils in which an active citizenry organizes itself. Translated toward the context of the Kurdish issue, this implied the development of a dual power in which the “people’s own democratic administration in Kurdistan” would coexist with the “state as the general public authority” (Öcalan 2004: 402–403). This framework required a significant rollback in the power and authority of the central states to enable the development of people’s democratic rule through institutions of self-government: As the national state cannot be a solution to the national problem in Kurdistan, the congressional regime remains the most appropriate solution. Since the people [of Kurdistan] will not accept the old slave life under any circumstance, and it is clear that the search for the national state carries the danger of deepening the existing deadlock, the most appropriate instrument of the democratic solution is the People’s Congress. (Öcalan 2004: 420–421) Öcalan defined this model of democratic self-government as democratic confederalism. Since he proposes to build these self-governing bodies throughout Kurdistan (and wherever there are Kurds living), democratic confederalism is to be considered the main mechanism for the unification of Kurdistan and Kurds, but the same applies for any other ethnic, cultural, or religious collectivity. Öcalan (2014: 32) argues thus: The people are to be directly involved in the decision finding process of the society. This project relies on the self-government of local communities and is organized in the form of open councils, town councils, local parliaments and larger congresses. Citizens are the agents of this kind of self-government instead of state-based institutions. The principle of federative self-government has no limitations. It can even be continued across borders in order to create multinational democratic structures. Democratic confederalism prefers f lat hierarchies where decision finding and decision making processes take place within local communities . . . It provides a framework within which minorities, religious communities, cultural groups, gender-specific groups and other societal groups, can organize themselves autonomously.

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This approach to self-determination through the establishment of democratic autonomous institutions for the ethnic groups is seen as capable of enabling them to retain their distinctiveness and enjoy groups’ rights without the need for their own state. On the contrary, the approach renders borders, which are an important constituting element of state power, irrelevant (Karasu 2009: 217–219, 208–210). In bourgeois thinking, the right to self-determination is formulated in terms of establishing a state. But this is not the socialist understanding of self-determination. We think democratic confederalism is the best possible way of practicing self-determination … Since democratic confederalism does not take the state as its main frame, it is also not about changing borders. On the contrary, it is a way of thinking and doing which is nonstatist. The frame of reference in democratic confederalism is developing a system of people’s democracy on the basis of self-organisation. As such, people develop their own institutions, councils. If people organise themselves from the bottom-up and establish relations with each other, with other councils, democratic confederalism renders borders as insignificant. (Karasu 2009: 208–210, 217–218) In the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES), the entity that has been created on the shoulders of the Syrian Democratic Forces of which the Kurds are the backbone, various ethnic or cultural groups have developed institutions and self-administrative bodies on the basis of the self-governance model Öcalan developed during the mid-2000s. This administrative system, or governance model, accommodates self-administration of various entities within the same administration: Regardless of administrative structures, democratic autonomy can be defined as a legal and political relationship in which the identity of different ethnic communities is recognized. It is about creating an environment where ethnic communities can take part in politics in their own right and on the basis of education in the mother tongue, cultural freedoms, and freedom of thought and association. (Serxwebun 2007: 23) The right to self-determination (democratic autonomy) and the network of selforganization (democratic confederalism) sustain a democratic nation. As an imagined community (Anderson 2006: 1093), Öcalan defined a nation as “a community of people who share a common mindset” (Öcalan 2015: 52). I have defined and presented the democratic nation as a new kind of nation, or rather a nation with multiple identities, multiple cultures, and multiple political formations. (Öcalan 2020: 369)

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The democratic nation “curbs and excludes exploitation and oppression” (Öcalan 2015: 52). This pluralist understanding of nation is not bound by state boundaries, language, culture, or religion. Instead, the democratic nation “signifies plurality and communities as well as free and equal citizens existing together and in solidarity”: The alternative modernity of the democratic nation is the democratic modernity. An economy freed from monopoly, ecology expressing harmony with the environment, and nature and human-friendly technology are the institutional basis of democratic modernity and therefore of the democratic nation. (Öcalan 2015: 52–53) The democratic nation allows the people to become a nation themselves, through self-organization. Since people are able to participate in more than one project of community-building through self-organization, the democratic nation is plural (Öcalan 2016: 27). An important implication of this approach to administration and nation is its non-exclusionary territorial character.

Working practice In the early years of the political transformation, during the beginning of the 2000s, the movement purported that a “democratic solution will be achieved within the framework of constitutional citizenship of Turkey” (Kongra-Gel 2004). In Turkey, this was articulated in the form of a project for the reestablishment of the republic as a democratic republic with a new constitution in which citizenship would be defined in civic terms and not equated with Turkishness, and decentralization would create possibilities for local self-administration (Casier et al. 2011). Though amendments to the constitution were approved in 2010, they failed to address Kurdish concerns and disappointed the hope for a democratization of Turkey (Larrabee and Tol 2011, Gunter 2013). It was thought that “Turkey could face increasing domestic instability and violence” (Larrabee and Tol 2011: 143) as a result of this lost opportunity, a prediction that was to come true when Turkey, in 2015, opted for a military solution to the Kurdish issue. In the 2000s, the Kurdish movement optimistically thought it would be easier to construct a democratic confederal system if recognized by the state but that the establishment of a democratic system of self-administration would, in the end, be the product of the Kurds’ own struggle (Karasu 2009: 216–217). This struggle should concentrate itself on the development of an active, civil society, from which the structures of self-administration could emerge. An example of an attempt to create such a dynamic political society has been made through the establishment of the Democratic Society Congress (Demokratik Toplum Kongresi, DTK) in Diyarbakır in October 2007. The DTK sees itself as the representative

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body for the peoples in Northern Kurdistan and the main vehicle for the implementation of Kurdish democratic autonomy in Turkey (DTK 2010). The Peoples’ Democratic Congress (Halkların Demokratik Kongresi, HDK), which brings together organizations representing different peoples in Turkey on the basis of the same principles is the Turkey-level counterpart of the DTK. The DTK played a key role in the development of a democratic autonomy proposal in Turkey and its discussion more broadly. It is an umbrella organization that brings together civil society groups, trade unions, political parties, and many local Kurdish political actors based in Kurdistan. It served as the forum for a discussion of Öcalan’s ideas, and during its meetings in 2010 and 2011, a more detailed democratic autonomy framework was developed (DTK 2012). The DTK’s democratic autonomy framework embodies the principles of decentralization, grassroots democracy, and people organizing themselves in local councils and actively taking part in debating issues, in decision-making at the local level, and in electing delegates to represent the local council in higher representative bodies such as at the district, province, and regional levels. It “aims to organize Kurdistan society in eight dimensions: Political, Legal, Self-Defense, Social, Economic, Cultural, Ecology, and Diplomacy, and to build political autonomy and to build Democratic Autonomous Kurdistan” (DTK 2010). In the other parts of Kurdistan, similar initiatives have been undertaken. In the Kurdistan region in Syria, this took the form of the People’s Council of Western Kurdistan (Meclîsa Gel a Rojavayê Kurdistanê), a network of self-administrating councils that developed into the autonomous administration, while in the Kurdistan regions in Iraq and Iran, it took the form of Free Society (Tevgera Azad) and the East Kurdistan Democratic and Free Society (KODAR). The co-chair Rêzan said about the establishment of KODAR which took place on May 5, 2014: “We insist on the concept of democracy, in a democratic structuring in which people decide over their own affairs ... This is why we demand democratic autonomy from the state of Iran and develop democratic confederalism in Kurdistan” (Personal Communication, October 30, 2014). One key aspect of the democratization of Kurdish society has been the promotion of gender equality and women’s rights by the different components of the Kurdish national movement. Although women have been active in large numbers in the ranks of the movement from the late 1980s onwards, the promotion of gender equality began to acquire a more central role from the early 2000s onwards. A women’s party, the Party of Free Women (Partiya Jina Azad, PJA) was established in 2000, and in 2004 it changed its name to the Freedom Party of Women of Kurdistan (Partiya Azadiya Jin a Kurdistan, PAJK). In Turkey, the legal pro-Kurdish political parties have also been mobilizing women over the past 30 years. Throughout the 2000s, the number of Kurdish women in elected positions increased significantly. In fact, many of the leading figures in the pro-Kurdish movement are women. Kurdish political parties use positive discrimination policies, such as a 40 percent gender quota and the cochair system, to increase women’s participation in politics. The co-chair system

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requires that all the elected positions such as mayors and party leaders at the district, provincial, and national level need to be shared by a man and a woman. Women were organized as part of the pro-Kurdish political network with their own representative organizations. Women were organized under the Democratic Free Women’s Movement (DÖHK), which in February 2015 changed its name to the Congress of Free Women (Kongra Jinên Azad, KJA); it continues to be active in the Kurdish regions (Bianet 2015). Also, in the past decade organizations that work to improve women’s position in society and that offer several services to women were established. These offer legal advice, psychological counseling, social integration projects for the forcibly displaced women and their children, and advice relating to domestic violence. In parallel to the initiatives of self-organization, the Kurdish movement was also successful in the legal field of representative politics. Again, in Turkey, the legal pro-Kurdish party managed to increase and stabilize its control over main cities in the southeast of Turkey. As a result of subsequent bans, this pro-Kurdish party has been operating under different names: HEP, ÖZDEP, DEP, HADEP, DEHAP, DTP, BDP, and HDP. In 1999, HADEP won 37 municipalities, in 2009, DTP won 99, and in 2014, HDP won 97. In 2008, the (then) DTP (now HDP) adopted the Free Municipal Model (özgür belediyecilik modeli) at a threeday congress with the objective of developing a bottom up participative administrative structure from local to provincial levels, that did not, coincidently, resemble the model of democratic confederalism (Casier et al. 2011). Though the municipalities stimulated the development of a participatory administration, this was seldom translated into projects that fed the imagination of developing alternatives. An example was a housing project in Viranşehir. The project, Ax û Av (Land and Water), was designed for 70 families as an ecologically sound community housing project and an alternative for the apartment blocks that “resemble F-type prisons” constructed by the Housing Development Administration (Toplu Konut İdaresi, TOKİ) associated with the central state (Arican 2014). However, the backside of such projects is that they resemble what James Scott refers to as miniaturization: the creation of a micro-environment in which a perfectly rational form of policy planning can take place (Scott 1998). Moreover, at the same time the municipalities implemented a much-criticized housing policy that was not so much different from TOKİ. The urban renewal spearheaded by Osman Baydemir, the mayor in Diyarbakır until 2014, was sharply criticized for its anti-poor bias (Aslan 2014). In spite of these critiques and ambiguities, the system of democratic selfadministration has established itself in various spheres of public life. Both in Turkey and in Syria, the establishment of community councils at the level of neighborhoods has played an important role in the construction of this new governance model, parallel to the state system. These local councils play a crucial role in organizing people, and they assume responsibility over their own affairs. An important dimension of this self-administration at the local level has been the role of justice or peace committees, institutions developed within the

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model of self-administration. These committees have played a crucial role in the mediation of conf licts, and, while doing so, contributed to the development of a social morality based on ideas such as gender equality, fair price, etc. The committees have also played important roles in the development of an education system, with Kurdish as a language of instruction, and in providing access for lower income groups. In Turkey, a system of dual power, the self-administrative governance structure of the movement, and local state institutions developed. However, when the AKP lost its majority in the June 2015 elections and the HDP entered parliament as the third party, Erdoğan annulled the elections, terminated negotiation with the PKK, which was prepared to end the armed struggle, and militarized the Kurdish issue again. After the failed coup, which he welcomed as “a gift of God”, an unprecedented crackdown on civil society occurred and a coup against local administration took place. Pro-Kurdish mayors were replaced by trustees, and clashes with militant youth escalated in urban warfare. While the Kurdish movement had attempted to develop a political sphere and self-administration, Turkey militarized the Kurdish issue again. In North and East Syria, the main threat to the self-administration that has developed there has been the military intervention by Turkey, not only crushing the system in Afrin but also changing the demography by ethnic cleansing targeting the Kurdish population. Though the development of self-administrative structures in Turkey has been disrupted by mass arrests and killing, in the parts of North and East Syria where Turkey did not intervene, the system of self-administration still is an important organizer of socio-economic and cultural life. In the agrarian-based economy, the economically and ecologically dysfunctional state farms have been broken up. On family farms and small-scale cooperatives, among them women-cooperatives, which function as a means of women-empowerment, an economy has been developed. In the colonial Syrian political economy, in which the fertile North-East mainly produced the raw materials for processing outside the region, processing and distribution have been developed. The selfadministration has a fair-price policy both for consumers and producers and a food-security policy for the poor, while the sale of land has been banned in order to prevent speculation.

Discussion and conclusion The search by the PKK and its leader, Abdullah Öcalan, for a new political approach centered on the role of the state. Problematizing the state as a political institution of domination, and not as a mere instrument for the realization of political objectives, came with a reorientation toward the idea of a confederation of self-organizing “communes” as a main organizational form for the development of a “free” society. In line with a school of thought that views capitalism as anti-economy (Braudel 1983) and the state as anti-political (Kropotkin 1947 [1897]), Öcalan wrote (2010: 193):

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Contrary to what is thought, capitalism does not mean economic development but the systematic denial of economy. The nation-state goes against what is thought, not through democracy, freedom, and human rights, but in the denial of these values. For Öcalan and the movement which orients itself toward his thought, the state does not liberate but subjugate, and the nation-state, as vehicle of cultural assimilation, is not compatible with a right of people to express difference in a democratic way. Öcalan shares this problematization of the state with other movements in the (mainly) global South that try to rethink a progressive politics after the failure of national liberation movements and the collapse of the Soviet Union, such as the Zapatista in Mexico and the Chavista in Venezuala (see the contribution of Dario Azzellini in this volume); these both tried to develop the commune as an institution of self-organization and as an alternative to the central state. The quest for independence beyond the construction of a state is based on the idea that we can distinguish the political realm from the statist realm and thus develop a political form that is not statist.This is translated into the idea of developing the self-administrating capacities of people. In the regions in which this idea was worked upon, councils were established as the primary spaces for deliberation and decision-making.This is what Arendt refers to in “On Revolution” as the empowerment of people, referring to the council form as revolution’s “lost treasure” (Arendt 1990: 253). Linking the idea of the commune and council form to the idea of confederalism, self-administration is placed within a wider context of collaboration and responsibilities. The political significance of the concept of confederalism is that local self-government does not imply a separation from others, but on the contrary, acknowledges the “responsibility towards the wider relations on which we depend” (Massey 2004). The emphasis on responsibility and interconnectivity has the potential to create inclusive geographies. The democratization of Kurdistan is beyond a legal problem and a comprehensive societal project. It involves the excluded segments forming, institutionalizing, managing, and overseeing their economic, social, and political will against the segments that deny the determination of the people’s identity and destiny. It is a continuous process. Elections are only one of the vehicles used for determining people’s will. The democratization of Kurdistan essentially requires the functional organization of and action by the people. It is a democratic process extending from the local village and city communes, to the city councils, to the municipalities and up to the people’s congress. It expresses a dynamic political life. (Öcalan 2004: 403) In 1981 Mazlum Doğan argued that the PKK’s program does not say it wants to establish a Kurdish state on a Marxist–Leninist basis. It wants the formation of an independent,

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democratic, united country, and the state will be national, democratic, and there will be an administration in which the people will govern themselves. Doğan could not foresee the turn this urge for independence took. Yet several decades later, his forceful statement saying he wanted an “administration in which the people will govern themselves” has been disconnected from the state idea all together. In this chapter we have discussed this transformation of the PKK and touched upon its political and organizational implications. We have argued that the PKK has redefined the concept of self-determination but noted that this took place within an extended ideological and political discussion about the ideas of socialism, liberation, and self-determination. As many other anti-colonial and liberation movements in the 1960s and 1970s, the PKK had conceptualized self-determination in terms of the right to separate (secede) and of independent state formation. Following a critique and self-critique in the 1980s and 1990s, the PKK, under the inf luence of Abdullah Öcalan, started to understand self-determination in terms of people’s self-organizing capacities. Making a distinction between statecraft and politics (not the state, but the capacity to make collective decisions and act upon these decisions) became central to the idea of self-determination. In accordance with this, the nation became defined as a political community, namely the product of a self-organization of people sharing a similar mindset, and the outcome of a process of subjectivation. Since people can be members of several political communities, they can also be members of more than one nation. In this understanding, the nation is no longer linked to nationalist exclusionism and the state. The political consequence is that this allows the development of diverse communities within a shared, multi-layered territorial and political space. This is to be achieved through transforming existing states toward a decentralized structure and pluralist character capable of providing representation to all of the collective groups within their territories.

Notes 1 The work of Hikmet Kıvılcımlı is the subject of another chapter in this book. See Chapter 2. Kıvılcımlı’s argument, that primitive socialism persisted in the pores of society, has similarities with Abdullah Öcalan’s argument that democratic civilization has been an underground current throughout history. 2 The People’s Liberation Army of Turkey (Türkiye Halk Kurtuluş Ordusu , THKO) and People’s Liberation Party-Front of Turkey (Türkiye Halk Kurtuluş Parti-Cephesi , THKP-C) were established in 1979, and the Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist– Leninist (Türkiye Komünist Partisi/Marxist–Leninist, TKP/ML) in 1972. These three parties were born from the revolutionary left. Mahir Çayan, one of the founders of the THKP-C, and İbrahim Kaypakkaya, one of the founders of TKP-ML, criticized the older generations for not recognizing the Kurdish struggle. Çayan fiercely criticized Mihri Belli for his defense of nationalism as a revolutionary force (Çayan 1979: 258–259), while Kaypakkaya straightforwardly argued, “Our movement will declare that it recognizes the Kurdish people’s right to self-determination and, if they wish to establish a separate state” (Kaypakkaya 2014: 105–106).

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3 The leaders of the THKO, Deniz Gezmiş, Yusuf Aslan, and Hüseyin İnan, were arrested at the beginning of 1971, sentenced to death, and executed on May 6, 1972. Most of the core cadre of the THKP-C, among them their leader Mahir Çayan and two other cadres of the THKO, were killed in a shoot-out in Kızıldere, Tokat, on March 30, 1972. The leader of the TKP/ML, İbrahim Kaypakkaya was taken prisoner on January 24, 1973, and after months of torture killed on May 19, 1973, in Diyarbakır Prison.

References Akkaya, A.H. (2016). The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK): National Liberation, Insurgency and Radical Democracy Beyond Borders, Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences Ghent University in Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Political Sciences. Ghent, Ghent University. Akkaya, A. H. and J. Jongerden (2011). The PKK in the 2000s: Continuity through Breaks. Nationalisms and Politics in Turkey: political Islam, Kemalism and the Kurdish Issue. M. Casier and J. Jongerden. London, Routledge: 143–162. Akkaya, A.H. and J. Jongerden (2013). Confederalism and Autonomy in Turkey: The Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the Reinvention of Democracy. The Kurdish Question in Turkey: New Perspectives on Violence, Representation and Reconciliation. C. Gunes and W. Zeydanlioglu. London, Routledge: pp. 186–204. Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London, Verso. Arendt, H. (1990). On Revolution. London, Penguin Press. Ari, K. (1995). Büyük Mübadele Türkiye’ye Zorunlu Göç 1923–1925. İstanbul, Tarih Vakfi Yurt Yayinlari. Aslan, A. (2014). Yıkılasan Big Chefs!. http://hebhinarke.blogspot.com/2014/06/yklasan -big-chefs.html (accessed 30 June 2020). Barkey, H.J. and G.E. Fuller (1998). Turkey's Kurdish Question. Oxford, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Bianet (2015). Kadınlar Kongra Jınên Azad'ı Kurdu. https://m.bianet.org/bianet/kadin/1 61974-kadinlar-kongra-jinen-azad-i-kurdu (accessed 17 April 2020). Bookchin, M. (1991). Libertarian Municipalism: An Overview. Green Perspectives, October. Bozarslan, H. (2008). Kurds and the Turkish State. Turkey in the Modern World. R. Kasaba. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 4: pp. 333–356. Braudel, F. (1983). Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, volume II: The Wheels of Commerce. London, Book Club Associates. Bruinessen, M.v. (1994). Genocide in Kurdistan? The Suppression of the Dersim Rebellion in Turkey (1937–1938) and the Chemical War Against the Iraqi Kurds (1988). Conceptual and Historical Dimensions of Genocide. G.J. Andreopoulos. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press: pp. 141–170. Casier, M. and J. Jongerden (2012). Understanding today’s Kurdish movement: Leftist heritage, martyrdom, democracy and gender. European Journal of Turkish Studies 14: pp. 1–26. Casier, Marlies, Joost Jongerden and Nic Walker (2011). Fruitless Attempts? The Kurdish Initiative and Containment of the Kurdish Movement in Turkey. New Perspectives on Turkey 44: pp. 103–128. Çayan, Mahir (1979). Butun Yazılar. Istanbul, Boran Yayınevi.

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Demokratik Toplum Kongresi (DTK) (2010). Demokratik Toplum Kongresi Bileşenlerince Hazırlanmış Olan, Demokratik Özerk Kürdistan Modelinin Taslak Sunumu. http://bia net.org/files/doc_files/000/000/179/original/demokratiközerklik.htm (accessed 16 April 2020). Demokratik Toplum Kongresi (DTK) (2012). Kürt Sorununun Çözümü İçin Demokratik Özerklik. Diyarbakır, Aram. Draper, Hal (1970). The Death of the State in Marx and Engels, Socialist Register. pp. 281– 307. https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1970/xx/state.html. Ebru Arican. 2014. Individual escapism or eco-community: selected cases of ecovillage initiatives in Turkey, PhD thesis, Department of Sociology, Middle East Technical University, Ankara Gundogan, A.Z. (2015). Space, State Making and Contentious Kurdish Politics. The Kurdish Issue in Turkey, A Spatial Perspective. Z. Gambetti and J. Jongerden. London, Routledge: pp. 27–62. Gunes, C. (2012). The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance. London, Routledge. Gunes, C. (2019a). The Kurds in a New Middle East: The Changing Geopolitics of a Regional Conflict. Cham, Palgrave MacMillan. Gunes, C. (2019b). Unpacking the ‘Democratic Confederalism’ and ‘Democratic Autonomy’: Proposals of Turkey’s Kurdish Movement. Minority Self-Government in Europe and the Middle East. O. Akbulut and E. Aktoprak. Leiden, Nijhoff: pp. 246–267. Gunes, C. and Ç. Gürer (2018). Kurdish Movement’s Democratic Autonomy Proposals in Turkey. Democratic Representation in Plurinational States: The Kurds in Turkey. E. Nimni and a.E. Aktoprak. Cham, Palgrave MacMillan: pp. 159–175. Gunter, M. (2013). Reopening Turkey’s Closed Kurdish Opening? Middle East Policy 20(2): pp. 88–98. Happel, K. (2006). Introduction. Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilisation (Translated by Klaus Happel). Abdullah Öcalan. London, Pluto Press. Jongerden, J. (2007). The Settlement Issue in Turkey and the Kurds: An Analysis of Spatial Policies, Modernity and War. Leiden, Brill. Jongerden, J. (2017). A Spatial Perspective on Political Group Formation in Turkey after the 1971 Coup: The Kurdistan Workers’ Party of Turkey (PKK). Kurdish Studies 5(2): pp. 134–156. Jongerden, J. (2019). Learning from Defeat: Development and Contestation of the “New Paradigm” within Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Kurdish Studies 7(1): pp. 72–92. Jongerden, J. and A.H. Akkaya (2011). Born from the Left: The Making of the PKK. Nationalisms and Politics in Turkey: Political Islam, Kemalism and the Kurdish Issue. M. Casier and J. Jongerden. London, Routledge: pp. 123–142. Jongerden, J. and A.H. Akkaya (2012). The Kurdistan Workers Party and a New Left in Turkey: Analysis of the Revolutionary Movement in Turkey through the PKK’s Memorial Text on Haki Karer. European Journal of Turkish Studies 14(14): 17. Jongerden, J. and A.H. Akkaya (2019). The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Kurdish political parties in the 1970s. M. Gunter. London, Routledge: pp. 270–281. Karasu, M. (2009). Radikal Demokrasi. Neus, Wesanen Mezopotamya. Kaypakkaya, I. (2014). Selected Works. Nisan. Knapp, M., A. Flach and E. Ayboga (2014). Revolution in Rojava Democratic Autonomy and Women's Liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London, Pluto. Kongra Gele Kurdistan (Kongra-Gel) (2004). Program, Tüzük ve Kararları. Weşanên Serxwebûn (Place of publication not stated).

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Kropotkin, P. (1947 (1897)). The State: It’s Historical Role. London, Freedom Press. Larrabee, F.S. and G. Tol (2011). Turkey’s Kurdish Challenge. Survival: Global Politic and Strategy 54(4): pp. 143–152. Lipovsky, I.P. (1992). The Socialist Movement in Turkey 1860–1980. Leiden, Brill. Massey, D. (2004). Geographies of Responsibility. Geografiska Annaler. (Series B) 86(1): pp. 5–18. Öcalan, A. (1993). 3. Kongre Konuşmaları. Weşanên Serxwebûn. Öcalan, A. (1995). PKK 5. Kongresi'ne Sunulan Politik Rapor. Weşanên Serxwebûn. Öcalan, A. (1999a). Sosyalizme de Israr Insan Olmakta Israr. Istanbul, Aram. Öcalan, A. (1999b). Savunma: Kürt Sorununda Demokratik Çözüm Bildirgesi. Istanbul, Mem Yayınları. Öcalan, A. (2004). Bir Halkı Savunmak. Cologne, Weşanên Serxwebûn. Öcalan, A. (2008). "Prison Notes June 18, 2008." Öcalan, A. (2011). Democratic Confederalism. London, Transmedia Publishing. Öcalan, A. (2013). Liberating Life: Women's Revolution. Neus, Mesopotamien Publishers. Öcalan, A. (2014). War and Peace in Kurdistan. London, Transmedia Publishing. Öcalan, A. (2015). Demokratik Uygarlık Çözümü (Fifth Volume). Istanbul, Amara Yayıncılık. Öcalan, A. (2016). Democratic Nation. Neus, Mesopotamian Publishers. Öcalan, A. (2020). The Sociology of Freedom: Manifesto of the Democratic Civilization , Volume III. Oakland, PM Press. Pirtûk û Wêje (2017). Mazlum Doğan´ın Savunması. https://pirtukweje.wordpress.com/20 17/04/12/mazlum-doganin-savunmasi/ (accessed 29 April 2020). PKK (1978). Kürdistan Devriminin Yolu. Samim, A. (1981). The Tragedy of the Turkish Left. New Left Review 126: pp. 60–85. Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, Yale University Press. Serxwebun (2007). Demokratik Ozerklik ve Ozerk Demokratik Kurdistan. 312(December): pp. 21–27. Ünal, S. (1998). Türkiye’de Komünist Düşüncenin Kaynaklarından Biri Olarak Dr. Hikmet Kıvılcımlı. Toplum ve Bilim 78: pp. 108–133. Ungor, U.U. (2012). Disastrous Decade: Armenians and Kurds in the Young Turk Era, 1915–1925. Social Relations in Ottoman Diyarbekir, 1870–1915. J. Jongerden and J. Verheij. Leiden, Brill: pp. 267–295. White, D. (2008). Bookchin: A Critical Appraisal. London, Pluto Press. Yarkin, G. (2015). The Ideological Transformation of the PKK Regarding the Political Economy of the Kurdish Region in Turkey. Kurdish Studies 3(1): pp. 26–46. Zürcher, E.J. (2004). Turkey: A Mondern History. London, IB Taurus. Rıza Altun, member of the leadership of the PKK, date of interview: October 30, 2014. The interview by Joost Jongerden took place in Qandil. Cemil Bayık, member of the leadership of the PKK, date of interview: October 30, 2014. The interview by Joost Jongerden took place in Qandil. Duran Kalkan, member of the leadership of the PKK, date of interview: October 28, 2014. The interview by Joost Jongerden took place in Qandil. Rêzan, co-chair of KODAR, date of interview October 30, 2014. The interview by Joost Jongerden took place in Qandil.

2 HIKMET KIVILCIMLI’S “HISTORY THESIS” AND THE NATION-FORM National revolutionaries as modern barbarians?1 İlker Cörüt

This chapter concerns the original theses of Hikmet Kıvılcımlı (1902, Pristine–1971, Belgrade), who spent more than 20 years in Turkish prisons and exile, mostly during the period of the Kemalist One-Party State (1925–1945). A monumental figure of the Turkish socialist movement, he played leading roles both as a politician and theorist from the 1920s until his death. During the 1920s he was among the leading cadres of the illegal Communist Party of Turkey (TKP); in the 1950s he led the socialist Homeland Party (Vatan Partisi); in the last decade of his life he tried to give direction to the rising revolutionary movements with his lectures and writings. For an active Marxist-Leninist leader who was constantly jailed and policed, he managed to write an unexpected number of books, articles, pamphlets and Turkish translations of Marxist classics, and he greatly contributed to the circulation of Marxist ideas among Turkish youth, working class, and intellectual circles. (For instance, Kıvılcımlı was one of the first translators of Capital into Turkish, having published many sections of Capital in Turkish prior to his arrest and 15-year jail sentence in 1938). His intellectual life, however, was not limited to his incredible productivity under the harsh political conditions of anti-communist Turkey in the Cold War years. He was the only Turkish Marxist thinker among all generations of Turkish Marxists of his era and after who went far beyond merely adapting Marxist ideas to the national context of Turkey. Despite his life-long respect for the USSR, and unlike most Turkish socialists, Kıvılcımlı never willed to be a local representative of revolutionary models imported from Moscow, Beijing, Tirana, or Havana. He was very attentive to what he called the “originality of Turkey”, and his search for better explanations for the originalities of Turkey resulted in the cornerstone of his thought: his “History Thesis” (Tarih Tezi). Inspired mainly by Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society ([1877] 1964), Friedrich Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State ([1884]

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1976) and Marxist theory as a whole, and Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah ([1377] 2005), Kıvılcımlı formulated his “History Thesis” to reinterpret historical materialism with a special focus on the laws of motion of pre-capitalist societies. Kıvılcımlı made a fully-f ledged presentation of his “History Thesis” with his 1965 magnum opus, History Revolution Socialism (Tarih Devrim Sosyalizm). The thesis claimed that until the advent of capitalism the main dynamic of historical change was not class struggle within a society but rather the strong “collective action” of barbarian nomads who embodied egalitarian and collectivist values of “primitive socialist society” against class-divided, civilized societies. Kıvılcımlı, inspired by Ibn Khaldun’s theory of asabiyyah, argued that civilized societies, with their class-divided structures and individualist culture, could not achieve the necessary collective action to resist barbarian attacks. As a consequence, Kıvılcımlı saw the answer to the rise and fall of ancient civilizations as residing in the conf licts between the barbarians and the settled, between “primitive socialism” and states. My questions to Kıvılcımlı in this chapter concern the lack of a theory of nation-form in his “History Thesis”. Even if Kıvılcımlı established clear parallels between the revolutionary potential of modern anti-colonial national liberation movements and pre-modern “Historical Revolutions” led by barbarian tribes against civilizations, he did not extend the theoretical implications of these parallels to their conceptual results. While in many respects the “History Thesis” seems to provide a perfect explanation for the radical potential of the national imagination and movements, why did Kıvılcımlı not attempt to derive any theory of nation from his theory on the decisiveness of asabiyyah, collective action, and communitarian values in the evolution of societies? And, if we read nation-form into his “History Thesis”, what new insights into nation-form and its radical potential can be reached? These are the two questions around which I organize my chapter on Kıvılcımlı. Through a close reading of the “History Thesis” by engaging in a critical dialogue with Kojin Karatani’s theory of nation and Ernst Bloch’s “principle of hope”, I will argue that, if Kıvılcımlı had extended his argument to its logical conclusion, he might have shown the immediate link between “primitive socialism” and nation-form. That he could not go beyond implying the link was, in my view, related to his failure in reconciling Khaldunian and Marxist moments of his “History Thesis”.

Basic concepts of the “History Thesis” Productive forces One of the central arguments of historical materialism is that “material productive forces”, along and in conf lict with “relations of production”, determine the course of history and revolutionary replacement of one mode of production with another. Despite disagreements among Marxists as to what productive forces precisely consist of, there is a widespread agreement that “productive forces”

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refers to the means of production (technology, machinery, science) and the labor force (skills, experiences, know-how). Kıvılcımlı ([1965] 2012: 24) stood outside this consensus by classifying productive forces into four groups: technology, geography, history, and collective action/human being.2 In addition to its composition, Kıvılcımlı’s conception of “productive forces” diverged from the established Marxist definition in another key feature. Unlike the standard Marxist view that regards the decisive capacity of technology in the replacement of one mode of production by another, Kıvılcımlı argues that in the pre-modern period the decisive productive force was collective action. Even in the capitalist mode of production, which is built on the constant replacement of living labor by new technologies and machinery, Kıvılcımlı ([1999] 2018a: 109) argues, collective action is, along with technology, one of two decisive productive forces: “It must never be forgotten that the most active, vital, and basic one among productive forces is Human being. […] In the final instance, also technology itself is set to work by human beings”. In redefining productive forces this way to include geography, history and, most critically, collective action, two key sources were likely his inspiration: The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State and Muqaddimah. Based on the findings of Lewis H. Morgan, the reinterpretation of “the production and reproduction of immediate life” by Engels ([1884] 1976: 191–192) provided Kıvılcımlı with a license for enlarging the classical definition of productive forces: According to the materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is, in the last resort, the production and reproduction of immediate life. But this itself is of a twofold character. On the one hand, the production of the means of subsistence, of food, clothing, and shelter and the tools requisite therefore; on the other, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. The social institutions under which men of a definite historical epoch and of a definite country live are conditioned by both kinds of production: by the stage of development of labor, on the one hand, and of the family, on the other. Engels does not limit the “production and reproduction of immediate life” to the “production of the means of existence”; rather, he extends it to “the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species”. The immediate implication of this enlarged definition is that the development of family forms is regarded, along with the development of labor productivity, as giving any social organization its specific color. According to Engels (1976: 192), before the rise of social classes and private property, when the productivity of labor was too low to give rise to social classes/antagonism and, necessarily, the state, it was kinship organization that determined the character of a social structure. With productivity increases, wealth differentiation, and the emergence of social classes; the state, Engels argues, replaces kinship organization and “the family system is entirely dominated by the property system”.

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It is still not so clear, however, how, based on Engels’ enlarged definition of productive forces, Kıvılcımlı defined collective action as one of the main components of productive forces and extended its decisive effectiveness into class-divided societies. After all, even when an association between kinship and collective action is posited, Engels does not allow for the extension of this association to class-divided societies because he limits the decisive effectiveness of kinship to primitive society. This is precisely the moment when Kıvılcımlı takes a Khaldunian turn to reinterpret Engels’ reinterpretation of productive forces and develop his original theory of collective action by positing it as a decisive productive force not only in primitive society but throughout the history of class-divided societies. Kıvılcımlı borrowed the concept of asabiyyah from Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah to associate the effectiveness of kinship with collective action. Below I engage in a discussion of how Kıvılcımlı appropriated asabiyyah in his own way to further develop his reading of Engels to formulate his “History Thesis”.

Asabiyyah/collective action Central to Khaldun’s Muqaddimah is the concept of asabiyyah. In Khaldun’s study of the rise and fall of dynasties in North Africa and the Middle East, asabiyyah refers to the intense feeling of solidarity among members of a nomadic tribe that makes them willing to sacrifice their lives for the survival of the group (Khaldun 2005: 124). There are two key factors for this, one material, one symbolic. The material basis of asabiyyah among the members of these tribes was rooted in the harsh physical conditions of survival in a nomadic life (2005: 91–94). Condemned to a kind of primitive communism in deserts, valleys, and mountains beyond the reaches of civilization and lacking a specialized armed force (state), members of these tribes turned to collective action for security (Khaldun 2005: 94–95). In Khaldun’s view, the world of the Bedouins was one where collective action necessarily functioned as an essential productive force. A belief in shared common descent was the symbolic basis of asabiyyah. This essentialized the bond between the members of these nomadic tribes, with the result of requiring unconditional solidarity against the many external military threats (Khaldun 2005: 98–99). Khaldun posited the rule that tribes with a stronger asabiyyah defeated tribes with a weaker asabiyyah (2005: 124). Aware of the almost invariable outcome of an armed encounter of nomadic tribes and sedentary people of North Africa and the Middle East, Khaldun recognized why sedentary people, considerably wealthier than nomadic tribes and possessing deterring powers of a specialized apparatus of armed force (state), were frequently defeated by nomadic warriors. He ascribed their loss to their diminished capacity for collective action, the result contingent on an asabiyyah weaker than their nomadic opponents (Hassan 2010: 193–195). According to Khaldun, a wealthier society has a more developed form of division of labor, meaning a greater dependency on the state, more fragmentation into classes, greater individualism, and, subsequently, less courage.

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It should have been clear by now how Kıvılcımlı defined collective action as one of the main components of productive forces. Through a Khaldunian reading of Engels’ recognition of kinship as a productive force of primitive societies, Kıvılcımlı reinterpreted the effective essence of kinship as collective action and indicated its importance to the survival of nomadic tribes or “barbarians”. Kıvılcımlı then went further than simply defining collective action as one of the main productive forces by examining how collective action/asabiyyah extended its decisive effectiveness into class-divided societies. For Kıvılcımlı, the collective action of egalitarian kinship communities continued to play its role in the history of class-divided societies as the main, albeit external, dynamic of their rise and fall through “Historical Revolutions” until the English Revolution, which ended the era of “Historical Revolutions” and began the era of “Social Revolutions”.

“Historical Revolution” and “Social Revolution” Synthesizing Khaldun’s theory of asabiyyah with historical materialism, Kıvılcımlı viewed collective action as one of the main productive forces, and he extended its decisive effectiveness to class-divided societies. To achieve this synthesis, he incorporated a third significant inf luence: Morgan’s Ancient Society. Categorizations of Kıvılcımlı’s original synthesis were mostly borrowed from this work. Based on Morgan’s periodization of the successive phases of human societies’ progress as savagery, barbarism, and civilization, Kıvılcımlı reframed the conf lict Muqaddimah placed between nomadic Bedouin people and sedentary people as a conf lict between barbarians and civilized. In this reframing of Khaldunian concepts, Kıvılcımlı attempted to generalize the lessons of Khaldun’s theory and to situate his discussion into a “world-historical context” (Satlıgan 2006: 47). More specifically, comparing his “History Thesis” to the history thesis of Marx and Engels, which is historical materialism, Kıvılcımlı claimed to have explored the laws of motion of the pre-capitalist civilizations or what he calls “Ancient History”, the term he uses to refer to the period between 4000–5000 BC and AD 1400–1500. Kıvılcımlı asserted that, since research on ancient societies was rudimentary during Marx and Engels’ life time, their theories on pre-capitalist social formations were based upon a very limited body of knowledge ([1970] 2018b: 13–20). Though Kıvılcımlı’s “History Thesis” was intended to address this deficiency in Marxist thought, his thesis became an original theory involving theses explicitly in conf lict with historical materialism. Focusing on ancient societies, Kıvılcımlı explored “the laws of the rise and fall of civilizations” (Kıvılcımlı [1965] 2012: 15). He defined the basic “laws of the rise and fall of [pre-capitalist] civilizations” as follows: 1. Unlike historical materialism, with its claim that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Marx and Engels [1848]

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1978: 473), Kıvılcımlı’s “History Thesis” asserted that the motor engine of the “fall” and “rise” of pre-capitalist civilizations was the struggle between the barbarians and the civilized. Though Kıvılcımlı (2012: 199) does not completely deny the existence and struggle of social classes in pre-capitalist civilizations, he still limits the transformative role of class struggle in precapitalist civilizations to non-systemic issues. The dynamic of pre-capitalist civilizational change for Kıvılcımlı was exogenous, not endogenous: the oppressed social classes of pre-capitalist civilizations could not achieve the required level of collective action (2012: 26). 2. Unlike dominant versions of historical materialism that posit technology as the decisive productive force largely accounting for societal changes throughout the history of civilizations, Kıvılcımlı’s “History Thesis” placed collective action at the very center of its explanation of the rise and fall of pre-capitalist civilizations. In his view (2012: 24–25), the pace and differentiation of technological development was insignificant until the rise of capitalism; the productive force that made a considerable difference in ancient history’s mechanisms of change was the collective action of actors. 3. The main agents of the rise and fall of pre-capitalist civilizations were barbarians, who, based on egalitarian and communal customs, traditions, and the relations of production of “primitive socialism”, achieved an incomparably stronger collective action than their civilized contemporaries. According to Kıvılcımlı (2012: 323–333), pre-capitalist civilizations did not endow their civilized members with a collective action capacity comparable to the barbarians. Economically, such civilizations were based on private property that unevenly distributed the wealth produced. Socially, uneven distribution of wealth created social classes and hierarchy, specifically an unproductive and super-exploitative “usury-merchant capital” (tefeci-bezirgan sermaye). Culturally, the existence of social classes and hierarchies undermined group feeling and fueled individualism among the civilized. Politically, a civilized society, with its deep divisions, individualist culture, and lack of a strong group feeling, could be held together only via state violence, a situation that further undermined any potential collective action. Therefore, in military confrontations, the pre-capitalist civilizations were expectedly subject to a rule-like superiority by their barbarian adversaries. 4. As an external striking power, barbarians fulfilled a progressive function by removing the obstacles ahead of historical progress whenever they destroyed a civilization (2012: 89–91). Kıvılcımlı argued that such civilizations were destroyed at a stage when they were under the complete sway of superexploitative usury-merchant capital and despotic states. No longer serving the further development of productive forces, the civilizations prime for destruction lacked the internal revolutionary dynamism/collective action capable of reversing the decay of civilization. Kıvılcımlı defined this creative destruction of decaying civilizations by “primitive socialist barbarians” as a “Historical Revolution”. The invasion of the lands of Western Roman

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civilization by barbarian tribes such as the Huns, Goths, and Vandals during the Migration Period, the victory of Mongolian nomadic tribes led by Genghis Khan and Timur over Chinese and Islamic civilizations, and the capture of Istanbul by Ottomans and the end of Byzantine Empire were all instances of “Historical Revolutions” against the civilized. 5. “Historical Revolutions” were replaced by “Social Revolutions”. Historical change carried out by barbarians came to an end with the rise of modern civilization/capitalism. Conf licts between relations of production and productive forces came to be resolved via “Social Revolutions” carried out by social classes (e.g., the bourgeois revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the socialist revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries). This replacement represents progress in the way radical societal change occurred, as the resolution of the conf lict between relations of production and productive forces has become an intra-civilizational classstruggle issue, meaning complete destruction of civilization is avoidable. There are main reasons for the rise of “Social” and the fall of “Historical” Revolutions since the English Revolution (2012: 30–31). Firstly, the transition of barbarians into civilization was completed, leaving behind no barbarian masses to instigate change. Secondly, owing to the cultural and technological achievements of modern civilization, oppressed social classes, whose equivalents in the ancient past could not achieve collective action to abolish the hegemony of usury-merchant capital, currently have the capacity to end class oppression.

The “History Thesis” and modern civilization Since Kıvılcımlı was a revolutionary devoted to overthrowing capitalist hegemony in Turkey and not a historian, the question arises as to why an otherwise a loyal follower of Marxism-Leninism needed to reinterpret historical materialism by developing a history thesis with a special focus on ancient history. Kıvılcımlı provided an explicit reason for developing a history thesis that focused on antiquity, and revealed his political motivation ([1965] 2012: 19): To understand contemporary Turkey, it was required to go back to the Ottoman History from which it emanated (rather has yet to emanate). When the matter of Ottoman history visited, it has been understood that it was a “Renaissance” of the Islamic Civilization, that Islamic Civilization, just like Greek and Roman Civilizations, was one of Ancient (Kadim) Civilizations that emerged from City (Cité), that when coming into being […] all of Ancient Civilizations, from proto-Sumer to Islamic Civilization, followed the same process […] and that unless it is well understood that all problems extending today can be causally traced back to Proto-Sumer, no concrete […] Historical incident can be satisfactorily explained.

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To understand contemporary Turkey, Kıvılcımlı had to go back to the dynamics of the rise and fall of pre-capitalist civilizations to examine how these elements extended into capitalist-era Turkey. The deeper he went in his analysis, the more he found the persistence and unique generative capacity of primitive socialism to be the main dynamic of change: “We cannot help but derive the lesson from every single [piece of ] evidence of [the] history of human beings, that it is the history of [the] reproduction of Commune” (Kıvılcımlı [2000] 2018c: 216–217). As he wrote in his most systematic presentation of his “History Thesis”, History Revolution Socialism ([1965] 2012: 379): Where is SOCIALISM in the Ancient History? [...] Socialism has been nowhere in history: because Civilization came into being when Primitive Socialism ended and Class-divided Society emerged. In this respect, History is: the gradual eradication by humans of Primitive Socialism wherever it existed. Socialism has been everywhere in history: because, despite all these endless attempts to “DESTROY” it, the impact of Tradition-Custom and Collective Action as productive forces of Primitive Socialism on the course of history could not have been completely eradicated.3 Throughout the “History of Civilizations,” primitive socialism has persisted in the pores of humanity to finally have given birth to Scientifc Socialism as a catalyzer and ferment. Kıvılcımlı detected three forms of the effectiveness of primitive socialism/collective action in modern civilization. In countries where capitalism has not established a fully-f ledged bourgeois society, at the very margins, residues of primitive socialist elements can be detected. Kıvılcımlı used as examples the cultural and economic practices in mountain villages populated by Alevi people, the followers of a heterodox Islamic tradition, and specifically imece, the traditional solidarity and cooperation practices between the villagers (1980: 4). Kıvılcımlı’s interest in the residual presence of pure forms of primitive socialism at the margins of modern civilization is far behind his interest in hybrid forms in which primitive socialist elements are intermingled with civilizational elements. A telling example is his theory of the ‘progressive potentials’ of the Turkish army. Kıvılcımlı argued that the Turkish army has progressive potential, due to the specific historical character of the transformation of the primitive socialist kinship organization (KAN) of the Ottoman Turks into civilization. Due to “the unmediated transition from the KAN-centered organization to the State-centered organization”, Kıvılcımlı ([1974] 2010: 151–152) argues that the “KAN-centered organization heavily put its stamp on the State-centered organization. When the KAN dissolved into the State, it left various marks and residues on the character of the State”. When detecting primitive socialism in its residual and hybrid forms, Kıvılcımlı was searching to understand the specificities of Turkey. However, the third form

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identified by Kıvılcımlı as another ground of the effectiveness of primitive socialism in modern civilization has nothing to do with his focus on the specificities of Turkey. Rather, it ref lects his attempt to reconcile his argument about the decisive persistency of primitive socialism throughout history, even in capitalism, with historical materialism’s positing class struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie as decisive in capitalism, not primitive socialism, which came to an absolute end with the rise of class-divided societies. The solution Kıvılcımlı developed to bridge these two very contrasting arguments is to find the foundations of modern civilization in primitive socialist traditions, customs, and values. This argument on primitive socialism as the foundation of modern civilization is what I would like to place right at the center of my discussion on the implications of “History Thesis” for modern civilization. Here he refers to at least three related phenomena through which, he argues, the primitive socialism of barbarians keeps informing modern civilization: the capitalist mode of production, scientific socialism, and the strong collective action of the working class. Unexpectedly for a Marxist thinker/politician, Kıvılcımlı posits a very intimate, almost essential bond between primitive socialism and capitalist mode of production. He does this by combining a Weberian reading of the origins of capitalism with his original “productive forces” theory that asserts “collective action” as the most decisive productive force. Kıvılcımlı ([1965] 2018d: 103– 150), apparently inspired by Weber’s ([1905] 2001) conceptualization of “the spirit of capitalism”, argues that the set of values and behavioral patterns giving life to capitalism, which, he thinks, is mistakenly attributed to Protestantism, has its real roots in the primitive socialist residues, which were still very vigorous in Europe, specifically England, in the Middle Ages. Unlike the Eastern, pre-modern civilizations where usury-merchant capital and despotism together effectively eradicated primitive socialist traditions and the collective action of the ruled, Kıvılcımlı (2018d: 84–88) argued, Western (European) pre-modern civilizations, specifically in England, failed to do the same, and primitive socialist values, relationships, and the capacity of the ruled for strong collective action survived in autonomous cities and village communes. The strength of collective action fueled the rise of the capitalist mode of production in Europe, and specifically in England, as a new way of organizing production. For instance, Kıvılcımlı defines entrepreneurship, in a manner likely inspired by Weber, as the distinguishing feature of capitalism ([1974] 2016: 31). He saw the energy and intelligence behind the organizational skills of the entrepreneurs who led the industrialization processes as deriving from “traditions and customs of the Commune” (2018c: 296). Kıvılcımlı constantly draws our attention to the primitive socialist values (honesty, reliability, collectivism, and the like) underlying the capacity for collective action, and he emphasizes how constitutive they were in the formation of capitalism in the West: While in the East individuals could not come together and always cheated others when they did, the courage of the people of the West to combine

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their capitals […] revealed that pre-historical social traditions and customs were still alive there. (2018d: 88) According to Kıvılcımlı, among the primitive socialist values that triggered and fueled the development of capitalism, barbarian traditions of freedom and selfruling, which despotism and usury-merchant capital in Europe failed to suppress altogether, had special roles. Freedom had its special role in the rise of capitalism, initially in England, by being the very basis of technological inventions, progress, and creativity: One may belittle freedom, suspecting whether freedom may create economic development and technology. Yes, it did. Turning humans into robots and enslaving their intelligence, the [ancient] civilization […] had destroyed all major inventions. However, free thinking was not enslaved in England. (2018d: 126) The more the capitalism developed and got systematized, Kıvılcımlı implies, the more collective action and its associated values, once the spirit of capitalism, became inscribed into the very materiality of the new system, specifically in the form of the socialization of production. While the production units of pre-capitalist ages were mostly petty producers (artisans and peasants) isolated from each other and thus unable to achieve strong collective action against their oppressors,4 Kıvılcımlı (2016: 43) argued, capitalist entrepreneurs gather laborers in factories equipped with modern technology to socialize production by subjecting workers to an “organic division of labor”.5 Based on the socialized nature of production in capitalism, first time in the history an oppressed class acquires the capacity for collective action high enough to overthrow the dominant class. What has made working-class consciousness and “scientific socialism” possible is, again, the socialized nature of production in which one can see the seeds of the collective action of primitive socialism. According to Kıvılcımlı, the “working class, thanks to its alliance with socialization of production, which is an enormous social force, […] created modern proletarian consciousness, organization, and socialism” (2008c: 18). The “History Thesis” could have provided further conceptually productive, new insights into the structures of modern civilization/capitalism, if it had not been seriously handicapped by the assumption Kıvılcımlı ([1974] n.d.: 20–22) made at the very beginning of his search that Marx and Engels’ analysis of modern civilization/capitalism is without any defect. Once this assumption was made and once it guided his analysis of pre-capitalist civilization, he automatically canceled the possibility that his interest in pre-capitalist civilizations might bring new, even challenging, insights to the Marxist analysis of bourgeois modernity. Unsurprisingly, his thesis, in its manifest propositions on modern civilization, is very much Marxist, as

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is evident in his approval of the revolutionary, progressive, and productivist nature of capitalism and the bourgeoisie, his emphasis on the decisive role of class struggle, and his theoretical neglect of the nation-form. The Khaldunian component of his “History Thesis”, when it comes to the analysis of bourgeois civilization, is there just to present the usual Marxist narrative with a new vocabulary, as can be seen in Kıvılcımlı’s acknowledgement of the revolutionary role of the working class with reference to “collective action” of the working class. However, I argue, when read against the grain, the “History Thesis”, with its emphasis on collective action as the most important productive force of not only ancient history but also of the modern age, involves implications not always aligned with a Marxist analysis of modern civilization. These implications have yet to be fully developed into their conceptual results. One of the most important of these implications pertains to the nation-form. As I discuss below, the “History Thesis” is undecided on nation-form and necessarily so. On the one hand stands a mainstream Marxist understanding of nation-form, which attributes a bourgeois character to nation-form, confines it to the problematic of nationalism, and thus lacks a conceptual toolbox to address the progressive potentials of the nation-form beyond the distinction between the nationalism of the oppressed and of the oppressor. On the other hand, with the analogies he made between “Historical Revolutions” of ancient history and anti-colonial national liberation movements of the twentieth century, and also through distinctions he made between nationalism (milliyetçilik) and what he called “nationism” (milletçilik), Kıvılcımlı seems to imply a continuity between primitive socialism and the nation-form. However, Kıvılcımlı never attempted to develop these analogies, implications, and distinctions into a systematic theory of the nation-form. This is what I attempt below.

The “History Thesis” and the nation-form So far, I have laid out the basic foundations of the “History Thesis” and the political motivations that led Kıvılcımlı to the “History Thesis”. In what follows I open a discussion on the lack of a theory of the nation-form in the “History Thesis”. The discussion is divided into two parts. First, I argue that the nationform is a blind spot in the “History Thesis” and necessarily so. The lack of a theory of the nation-form in the “History Thesis” was not merely an issue of secondary importance overlooked by Kıvılcımlı. Rather, it was symptomatic of his way of bridging the Khaldunian and Marxian moments of his “History Thesis”. Secondly, I argue that, indeed, the “History Thesis” has an original theory of the nation-form, but only very implicitly and as a suppressed potential waiting to be further elaborated and given a coherent shape. Through a critical rereading of basic theses of the “History Thesis” and by merging insights of this reading with Kojin Karatani’s theory of nation and Ernst Bloch’s “principle of hope”, I try to develop a discussion on what a theory of the nation-form in the “History Thesis” would have looked like.

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The lack of a theory of the nation-form in the “History Thesis” Even though the “History Thesis”, with its emphasis on the revolutionary agency of self-governing barbarians, is very helpful for understanding the revolutionary agency of the nation with its right to self-determination, Kıvılcımlı did not develop a theory of the nation-form and not merely because he did not have the time or opportunity to formulate one. If he had coherently extended the validity of his thesis – that the real protagonists of pre-modern history were the culturally homogenous and egalitarian self-governing barbarians with their strong collective action/asabiyyah – into modern civilization, he would have had to recognize the nation as the main revolutionary agent of modern civilization. Given that most revolutions of the modern age – in the form of either bourgeois nationaldemocratic revolutions in the West or anti-colonial national revolutions in the colonies – were led by nations, such an extension would also be empirically reasonable. However, that would have brought Kıvılcımlı to the very edge of a dilemma, for he was a card-carrying Marxist who did not have any doubt about the revolutionary leadership of the working class, and he also subscribed to the mainstream Marxist conception of the nation as a bourgeois fabrication. In other words, the nation was the blind spot of his “History Thesis” and necessarily so. Expectedly, Kıvılcımlı’s theoretical stance toward the nation-form was far from coherent, oscillating between the usual Marxist-Leninist understanding of the nation-form, which is mainly based on Stalin’s ([1913] 1942) definition, and the conception of the nation-form that is more aligned with the radical spirit of the “History Thesis”. To proceed with the radical conception of the nation-form, it is possible to find some statements on the nation-form, though not in a coherent framework, in Kıvılcımlı’s books that emphasize the continuity between primitive socialism and the nation-form. In one of these statements he clearly mentioned that “[t]he types of ‘Nation’ emerging with capitalism are [...] developed versions of the commune” (2018c: 294). He never pursues these kind of statements to the very end, yet he is still well aware of the radical potentials of the nation-form. In one of his discussions of anti-imperialist and anti-oligarchic Turkish youth radicalism of the 1960s, he defines the radical politics stemming from the nation as “nationism” (milletçilik), which he clearly distinguishes from “nationalism” and “etatism” ([1970] 2014: 25–28). With nationism, he is likely referring to a kind of radical republicanism, which is not as radical as socialism but still on the far left of nationalism. Taking nationism as an extension of the primitive socialism of early Ottoman warriors (ilb) into the Republican period (though without clarifying by which mechanisms this extension took place), Kıvılcımlı establishes a parallel and continuity between the primitive socialism of these warriors and the radical republican patriotism of university students and the lower ranks of the Turkish military. Even if he limited the term “nationism” to the Turkish case, treating it as a peculiarity of Turkish social formation, his remarks on anti-colonial national revolutions strongly indicate that he recognized socialist potentials of the

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nation-form. Complaining of the “indifference of ‘left’ and ‘socialist’ intellectuals” to his “History Thesis”, Kıvılcımlı ([1974] n.d.) once referred to anticolonial national revolutions as a proof of the value of his interest in ancient history. According to Kıvılcımlı, these socialists were likely to think that, in the end, ancient history was a “majestic cemetery” and that “neither capitalism nor socialism had time to revive the dead”. The anti-colonial national revolutions, Kıvılcımlı argued ([1974] n.d.: 16–17), proved them wrong: The door of the “grave of ancient history”, which had been partly opened in the First Imperialist World War, was opened to the end with the Second Imperialist World War [...] All beings buried in ancient history resurrected one by one [...] So-called “backward” or “Asian” countries [...], from America to Cuba, which were attributed no value other than their being ancient, underwent a great upheaval [...] They impatiently called the imperialist metropolises to account [...] “[B]ackward” countries [...] jumped directly into socialism by their own way. This was a total inf lux of “Oppressed Nations …”. Europe, as it happened before the Middle Ages, [...] was targeted by a new “The Migration Period: Inf lux of the Nations”, in ways that it had never expected. Then it dawned on the all: These backward “barbarians” did not heed the 500-year-old “private enterprise” paradise on earth. Ancient history, with its 7000 years-old past, resulted in a new upheaval [...] and opened the way of non-capitalist mode of development. The parallels Kıvılcımlı established between the national revolutionary and the barbarian, between anti-colonial national revolution and the Migration Period, are very clear. Based on these parallels, one may justifiably be led to think that Kıvılcımlı understands the nation-form to be a modern form of primitive socialism. However, both the ambiguities in the passage cited above and Kıvılcımlı’s discussions on the nation-form in his other texts prevent us from concluding that Kıvılcımlı developed his scattered convictions and opinions on the socialist potentials of the nation-form into a coherent and original theory. First, as I mentioned above, the nation-form was a blind spot in his “History Thesis” and necessarily so. The whole solution Kıvılcımlı brought to the tension between the Khaldunian and Marxian moments of his “History Thesis” was based on the suppression of the nation-form. For if Kıvılcımlı had consistently extended his Khaldunian thesis on the unique revolutionary potential of collective action based on the asabiyyah of kinship groups into modern civilization, he would have had to recognize unique revolutionary potentials of the nation-form in modern age, facing a conf lict with Marxist-Leninist theory on the leadership of the working class and on the nation as a bourgeois fabrication. That is why his stance toward left-oriented, anti-colonial national revolutions was full of ambiguities that undermined basic conceptual distinctions in his

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“History Thesis”. For instance, he saw these revolutions as “hybrid revolutions” (2008a: 79–80) during which primitive socialist or ancient forces brought into being a “non-capitalist development”. As revolutions bringing a socialist change, left-oriented, anti-colonial national revolutions did not fit with the “Historical Revolutions” of pre-capitalist civilizations, nor did they fit with the “Social Revolutions” of modern civilization, as they were revolutions led by primitive socialist forces and not by social classes. The “hybrid” of “hybrid revolution” signifies no more than a failure of the “History Thesis” to conceptualize the distinct revolutionary potential of the nation-form. The second major ambiguity in Kıvılcımlı’s stance toward anti-colonial, national revolutions pertained to the status of the nation. While, as it is shown below, Kıvılcımlı was well aware of the nation as a product of modern civilization, in the quotation cited above, the nation was associated with ancient history and likened to the tribes of the Migration Period without any note on the qualitative difference between tribe and nation. If the “nation” of anti-colonial, national revolutions had not been labeled ancient, the working class would have lost the privilege it was gifted by Marxism as the only actor capable of fighting for socialism. It is precisely for the same reason, to reserve the privilege of fighting for socialism for the working class, that Kıvılcımlı needed to use the term “non-capitalist way of development” to define the peculiar character of the socialist transformations led by anti-colonial, national revolutions. Second, his subscription to the Marxist-Leninist theory of the nation as a bourgeois fabrication, even in his last books, articles, and speeches, remained a barrier to an original theory addressing continuity between the nation-form and primitive socialism. According to Kıvılcımlı ([1970] n.d.: 95), “nation is an outcome of capitalist economy”. His answer to the question “What is national?” is as follows: “National, as it is known, is a concept created by capitalism. In other words, [the] nation is a social constitution created by [the] capitalist class and capitalist economy” (2008c: 103). The argument that the nation-form is a product of the capitalist age is not problematic in itself. After all, there is almost a consensus on the modernity of national phenomena. However, Kıvılcımlı goes beyond this argument. He emphasizes the agency of the bourgeoisie in the formation of the nation and the bourgeois character of the nation-form, identifying the national with the bourgeois: “bourgeois means national” (2008c: 35). Therefore, any attempt to explore the origins of the nation-form in primitive socialism becomes pointless from his point of view. This is most evident in the distinction he makes between “nation” (millet) and “people” (halk), with the former referring to an illusory unity of society covering all classes and the latter to exploited classes sharing similar interests: “In our view, ‘people’ signifies workers and peasants. When it comes to nation, it refers to modern society with all dominant and dominated classes, including bourgeoisie and landlords as well” (2008c: 35). Therefore the nation, by its very bourgeois nature, cannot be a ground of socialist politics, according to Kıvılcımlı, at least to MarxistLeninist Kıvılcımlı.

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Filling the gap: A theory of the nationform implicit in the “History Thesis” The discussion to be developed here is based on my threefold conviction concerning the “History Thesis”. First, we should take very seriously Kıvılcımlı’s thesis that “Socialism has been everywhere in history: because, despite all these endless attempts to “DESTROY” it, the impact of Tradition-Custom and Collective Action as productive forces of Primitive Socialism on the course of history could not have been completely eradicated”. Second, his theses that in capitalism primitive socialism is materialized in the socialized nature of production, and that the socialized nature of production is the very basis of the strong collective action of the working class is unconvincing and, indeed, a concession Kıvılcımlı made to Marxism. Third, if Kıvılcımlı had consistently developed his theory on the persistence of primitive socialism throughout history into its conceptual-logical results, he would have had to argue that in capitalism primitive socialism reproduces itself in the form of nation. In what follows, in a dialogue with Kojin Karatani and Ernst Bloch, I will try to argue that the socialist spirit of barbarianism survives in the national imagination. There are three reasons why the theses that in capitalism primitive socialism materializes in the socialized nature of production, and that the socialized nature of production is the very basis of the strong collective action of the working class cannot be convincingly defended. First, it is not the collectivist culture of primitive socialism, not culture of solidarity, but rather the competitive environment of the free market that further socializes production by compelling capitalists to deepen the division of labor and constantly renew technologies. Marx (1976: 168) describes the mechanism at work in the socialization of the means of production as follows: One capitalist can drive another from the field and capture his capital only by selling more cheaply. In order to be able to sell more cheaply without ruining himself, he must produce more cheaply, that is, raise the productive power of labour as much as possible. But the productive power of labour is raised, above all, by a greater division of labour, by a more universal introduction and continual improvement of machinery. The greater the labour army among whom labour is divided, the more gigantic the scale on which machinery is introduced, the more does the cost of production proportionately decrease, the more fruitful is labour. Second, workers are not automatically endowed with strong collective action by being linked to each other via the organic division of labor/the socialized nature of production. On the contrary, as Lukacs ([1923] 1971: 89) stated with reference to the reification of social relationships, the further the division of labor develops, the less capable the workers become of changing the world:

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This fragmentation of the object of production necessarily entails the fragmentation of its subject. […] Neither objectively nor in his relation to his work does man appear as the authentic master of the process; on the contrary, he is a mechanical part incorporated into a mechanical system. He finds it already pre-existing and self-sufficient, he has to conform to its laws whether he likes it or not. As labour is progressively rationalised and mechanised his lack of will is reinforced by the way in which his activity becomes less and less active and more and more contemplative. Thirdly, and perhaps most critically, the conceptual origins of “collective action” in Khaldun’s theory of asabiyyah remind us that the working class, so long as it is understood as a mere interest group in conf lict with capitalists, cannot perform strong collective action that compares to the foolhardiness of revolutionary agency. According to Khaldun, asabiyyah was not only based on the harsh conditions of survival of nomadic tribes and material necessity of standing together against threatening others. It also had a symbolic element; namely, members of a nomadic tribe were unified through a belief in a shared common descent. The shared common descent established an essential bond between the members of these nomadic tribes, requiring unconditional solidarity among them. In the somatic culture of these nomadic tribes, I argue, common descent might have served as a biological metaphor making culturally identical and socially equal members of these tribes imagine their unitarian existence as a naturally given, sui generis reality and thus symbolically reinforcing and reproducing their collectivist organization and action. As Marshall Sahlins (2013: ix) states, “kinship categories are not representations or metaphorical extensions of birth relations; if anything, birth is a metaphor of kinship relations”. Thus, the symbolic/ideological secret of asabiyyah or collective action resides not necessarily in a belief in common descent but in one’s being subjected to an identity, to a collectivity instituted by a “Subject with a capital S” (Common Ancestor, God, the State, Party) (Althusser [1971]) 2014: 195), thanks to which the individual achieves imaginary fullness and gains an illusionary access to the true essence of things, to emancipation and immortality. Otherwise, it would not have been possible for Islam, with its promise of eternal emancipation, to have functioned as a stronger source of asabiyyah than common descent and unified tribes in conf lict under the same f lag (Khaldun 2005: 125–126). Therefore, the glue binding the “We” of asabiyyah is not limited to having identical interests, and solidarity among the members of this sort of “We” is not a matter of calculations of possible gains and losses. This is most strikingly evident in the readiness to sacrifice lives for the sake of the nation. As Benedict Anderson (2006: 144) states, [I]f historians, diplomats, politicians, and social scientists are quite at ease with the idea of “national interest”, for most ordinary people of whatever class the whole point of the nation is that it is interestless. Just for that reason, it can ask for sacrifices.

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Therefore, the collective action of the working class, which can only come into being as an outcome of the articulation of common interests, is handicapped by serious limitations. That is why, for example, Sorel ([1908] 1999), with reference to the energizing potential of “the myth of a general strike”, argued that rational motivations based on material interests may not suffice to ensure strong collective action and unity of the working class. The question that comes to the fore, then, is: given that barbarian tribes are already extinct in modern age, if the socialization of production has nothing to do with primitive socialism and the collective action of the working class already has inherent limitations and further weakens in parallel to the socialization of production, does it mean that the “History Thesis” has no explanatory and anticipatory power for the revolutionary processes of modern civilization? The answer I give to this question is a clear “no” and for a good reason. To uncover the radical promises and implications of the “History Thesis” for modern civilization, however, we need to remember some basic foundations of the “History Thesis” in order to reinterpret them in accordance with its radical spirit. 1- According to Kıvılcımlı, two productive forces decisive in the change of modern civilization are technology and collective action: “In modern society technology blows up [the] productive force of […] geography and […] history so radically and easily that it is likely that in the change of society only technology and collective action have remained active” (2012: 25). 2- Except for the concession he made to Marxism in order to define the main dynamic of change in capitalism as the conf lict between workers and capitalists, Kıvılcımlı posited that the motor engine of change throughout the history was the struggle between primitive socialism and civilization. 3- According to Kıvılcımlı, civilization has at least four components: (a) trade, (b) money, (c) writing, and (d) the state. However, the distinguishing component of civilization is the state, which was completely missing in primitive socialism (2012: 187): The only object that civilization can receive a hundred percent patent is the state, sovereignty. In barbarism, everyone was armed: Only the state is armed in civilization. […] With civilization, the social character of things, people, relationships, and thoughts has been overturned and turned upside down. The most prominent symbol of this revolution is the state, which is the essence of the civilized society. Taking these principles of the “History Thesis” into consideration, we need to take three steps: First, we need to take back the groundless concession made to Marxism and extend the struggle between primitive socialism and civilization into capitalism. Second, we need to operationalize the struggle between primitive socialism and civilization by reframing it as the struggle between primitive socialism and the state. In the end, “[b]arbarians are […] a state effect; they are

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inconceivable except as a “position” vis-à-vis the state” (Scott 2009: 123). Third, we need to recognize that the fate of the struggle between primitive socialism and the state was determined exclusively by the productive force of collective action until the modern age, and it is currently determined by the productive forces of technology and collective action together. Given the low level of technology and its very slow progress in ancient history, technology did not make a significant difference in the encounter between the barbarians and the civilized until the modern age. The decisive productive force of the whole pre-capitalist history was collective action, which was incomparably higher among the barbarians than the civilized. Therefore, as a rule, as argued by Kıvılcımlı, the barbarians defeated the states/civilizations throughout ancient history. Things radically changed by the modern age when technological modernization has reached an astonishing pace in production, communication, and the military, endowing states with extraordinary capacities against the collective action of the barbarians and thus marking a turning point in the encounter between the barbarians and states. This has not necessarily meant the end of “Historical Revolutions”, in opposition to Kıvılcımlı’s argument, but rather that “Historical Revolutions” overlapped with “Social Revolutions” by changing the very landscape of the barbarian-states conf lict. The quantitative changes in the “infrastructural power of the state” (Mann 1984) brought into being by technological revolutions in the modern age have been so massive that the state realized its internal tendencies only in the modern age. As James Scott (2009: 4) states, Only the modern state, in both its colonial and independent guises, has had the resources to realize a project of rule that was a mere glint in the eye of its pre-colonial ancestor: namely to bring nonstate spaces and people to heel. Until the nineteenth century, and even extending into the twentieth century in colonies, given the weakness of the infrastructural power of the state, it was not exceptional that there were self-governing communities, Kıvılcımlı’s “barbarians”, living in deserts, valleys, hills, shattered zones, and frontiers almost completely independent of state intervention. Even when these self-governing communities failed to enjoy full independence from the states, the states, by ensuring the cooperation of leaders of these communities, barely instituted an indirect authority over them (Tilly 1990: 103–114; Hechter 2000: 35–55). That is not the typical case in the last two centuries. Equipped with enormous surveillance and military capacities, absolute monarchical and colonial states, historically the first forms of the modern state, established full-f ledged territorial control, leaving nobody outside the violently constructed legal and institutional framework. That also meant the destruction of the political, cultural, and economic bases of the autonomy and semi-autonomy of self-governing communities. At the political level, self-governing communities were disarmed. Members

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of these communities were individualized, given ID cards, and subjected to conscription and taxation. At the cultural level, the local traditions and customs of the self-governing communities were eradicated and labeled backward and primitive. The communities were civilized by forced schooling and settlement, public health policies, propaganda, etc. At the economic level, the modern state led the primitive accumulation of capital: the traditional moral economy of selfgoverning communities was violently replaced by a free market mechanism; commons were seized and transferred to private interests; peasants and artisans were dispossessed and turned into waged laborers. The outcome was the dissolution of culturally distinct self-governing communities into the mass of culturally identical, formally equal, economically dispossessed individual subjects of the modern state (Weber 1976). How then can we posit that the conf lict between primitive socialism/asabiyyah and the state may still function as the motor engine of modern society given the absolute collapse of self-governing communities? Kojin Karatani’s theory of the nationform, which is built on a synthesis of Kantian philosophy of imagination and economic anthropology of modes of exchange, provides us with a fertile ground the critical assessment of which will bring us closer to the answer. As part of a wider agenda of retheorizing the structure of world history, Karatani’s theory of the nation-form has three pillars. According to Karatani, nation and state are not derivative superstructural products of generalized commodity exchange. Rather they have lives and realities of their own, as they “originate in their own distinct modes of exchange (economic bases)” (2014: 4). Community (nation is its modern version) is based on “reciprocity (gift and counter gift)”, and the state is based on “plunder and redistribution (domination and protection)” (2014: 9). Further, Karatani argues that even if the state and capital together, either through absolutist monarchical or imperialist colonial states, destroyed the very body and material basis of community, that is, reciprocal exchange, community continues to exist, even imaginary, in the form of the nation. The nation is “a substitute for community” (2014: 215). In other words, “[t]he nation is nothing but an ‘imagined’ recovery of the community” (2017: 7). It means that “the real disparities produced by the capitalist economy and the lack of freedom and equality are compensated for and resolved in imagined form” (2014: 220). The nation has thus two conf licting effects at once: [The] nation is [...] a demand for the egalitarian and implicitly harbors a critical protest against the state and capital. At the same time, however, as the imagined resolution to contradictions generated by capital-state, the nation also shields capital-state from collapse. (2014: 220) Therefore, and this is his third point on nation, nation does not serve truly emancipatory causes; rather nation, state, and capital together form a perfect

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conservative trinity that effectively suppresses subversive and revolutionary movements (2014: xiv): This is a mutually complementary apparatus. For example, a capitalist economy allowed to take its own course will inevitably result in economic inequality and conf lict. But the nation, as something that intends communality and equality, will seek to resolve the various contradictions and inequalities introduced by the capitalist system. The state in turn realizes this intention through such measures as taxation, redistribution, and various regulations. Capital, nation, and state are distinct entities, each operating according to its own principles, but like a Borromean knot, they are linked in such a manner that all will fall apart if any of the three is missing. If one completely subscribes to the nationalist assumption that society is an evolving unity in homogenous and empty time, completely ignores the processual openness and unfinished nature of society, and limits analysis to a photographic moment of society, one cannot but agree with Karatani’s conclusion about the ultimately conservative nature of the “nation as an imagined recovery of community”. For in the middle of a society characterized by actual hierarchies, inequalities, and dominance, the idea of the nation as a community, as a union of equals, can be sustained only if, with the supports of imaginative power, actual disparities are made trivial and treated not as the essence of the thing, but as superficial phenomena. Imaginative power, with the ways of seeing it enables, helps one “pierce the veil of real [...] to see beyond it” (Chakrabarty 2000a: 150), to see the essence of the thing, that is, race-culture-history. Thus the nation/ community becomes substantialized and aestheticized (Karatani 2017: 19) in order to alleviate, though not heal, the pain of the oppressed, like an opiate. But what if, as Ernst Bloch (1996) argued, social reality is by its very nature “not yet”? What if hope as a constant search for that which is better than what actually exists – “the No to the bad situation which exists, the Yes to the better life that hovers ahead” (1996: 76) – is the distinguishing feature of human beings, and the utopias it energizes permeate everywhere, making social ontology future-oriented, projective, and thus open? What if society lacks a unity and totality, is “ontologically incomplete” (Zizek 2013: xvii), and is “full of objective real possibilities” (Hudson 1982: 90) that negate actual oppressive forms of society from within, extending themselves into the future as tendencies, and thus keeping the future open? Blochian social ontology structured with the principle of hope, which strongly resonates with Kıvılcımlı’s argument on the persistence of barbarian traditions throughout history against civilization (Erdoğan 2019, Bora 2016), gives us grounds for making a non-nationalist interpretation of the “nation as an imagined recovery of community”. What is new with this Blochian ground is the way it requires a radical shift in our understanding of imagination and temporality:

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1) In such a “projective ontological order” (Hudson 1982: 150), in “ontological incompleteness”, imagination is not a matter of correspondence or non-correspondence. “Gap” is not a proper term to qualify the noncorrespondence between that which is imagined and reality itself, for social reality is not a finished, settled reality to serve as grounds for comparison. Nor can “gap” be reduced to a compensatory escape from the intolerable harshness of reality. Rather “gap” should be understood first as “venturing beyond” (Bloch 1996: 4), a utopian investment/projection made into the future. Here imagination acquires a constitutive power “sustain[ing] men with courage and hope, not by looking away from the real, but, on the contrary, by looking into its progress, into its horizon” (1996: 76). 2) The “ontological incompleteness” of social reality has immediate, temporal implications. If social reality is unfinished, that means we lack a reference point from which we can judge whether the past really passed or has “not yet” passed. Again, the future cannot be defined as a predictable extension of the present; rather it turns into a possibility. That is why Bloch (1996: 196) concluded that “[t]he Real is process; the latter is the widely ramified mediation between present, unfinished past, and above all: possible future”. According to this mediation, which Bloch (1991) calls “synchronicity of the non-synchronous”, “past and present are not necessarily successive but simultaneously produced” (Harootunian 2005: 47). Events, ideas, and relationships rooted in earlier epochs acquire new meanings and functions in the struggles occurring “now” for better futures. That is, “unrealised surpluses of meaning can be explored through a retrospective engagement with the past which is guided by the hermeneutics of hope” (Terreblanche 2010: 63). Based on these insights, we can reinterpret and even may have to reformulate the definition of the “nation as an imagined recovery of community”. I argue that, contrary to the classical assumption (Durkheim, [1893] 1984), “community” (Gemeinschaft) should not be considered as a pre-modern social form that is historically prior to “society” (Gesellschaft). Rather “community” and “society” are contemporaneous; that is, “community” as an imagined social form has been called into being by “society” as its utopian other, negating it from within. To put it in more precise terms, “community” is an antagonistic negation of “society”; it has no content in itself and can only be defined in comparison with “society”. “Community” as such does not have a life independently of “society”. All those distinguishing features of “community” – such as equality, transparency, harmony, self-identicality – are features of a utopian stateless social form whose unity and functioning does not require a kind of violent coordination that “society” essentially requires as a class-divided social form “entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself ” (Engels 1976: 326–327). To use Ernst Bloch’s terms, community is a “concrete utopia”. It is utopian in the sense that it is a negation of actually existing oppressive forms of society, but it is also very

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much concrete because this negation is an immanent and not transcendental one, taking place from within society’s negated mechanisms and institutions (Bloch 1996: 146). Thus the necessity of making several revisions in Karatani’s definition of “nation as imagined recovery of community” becomes clear. First, what Karatani calls community is in fact the return in a new guise of primitive socialism whose ideological and cultural attendants, albeit not collective material basis, have survived the destructive expansion of the modern state and market. It means that “community”, as contemporaneous with “society”, cannot be an object of recovery. Therefore, we can revise Karatani’s definition of nation and reword it as the “imagined recovery of primitive socialism”. However, as this imagination at work in the recovery of primitive socialism is immanent and not transcendental one called for by inegalitarian and hierarchical “society” as its utopian other, we can go beyond this redefinition to attain a final and more precise formulation of “nation as concrete utopian recovery of primitive socialism”. The nation as a concrete utopian recovery of primitive socialism “is a projective ontological concept, not a metaphysical reality which is already actual” (Hudson 1982: 101). It has two very important implications. First, the nation can come into being only when the existing barriers to its realization of its full being are eradicated. In other words, the nation can come into being only as the subject of a claim to the right to self-determination against “capital-state, that is the union of capital and state” (Karatani 2014: 172), as instantiated in imperialism, absolutist monarchy, and oligarchical dictatorship. Second, and very much in relation to the first point, any attempt to assign positive content to the nation via race, culture, or history is to substantialize the nation and thereby cancel its antagonistic nature, which is its core, and confine it to the nationalist problematic of the representation of oneness. This is not to say that the nation as a concrete utopia does not have a culture, history, and particular trajectory, nor is it to imply the insignificance of such particularities of the nation. In the end, the nation/community is a negation of society from within, that is, a negation made from within the cultural framework of a society brought into being by capital and the state. My point is rather limited to the fact that the essence of the nation, its utopian nature, has nothing to with the particular race, culture, or history (e.g., Turkishness, Germanness, Whiteness) in which the nation is embedded.

Notes 1 Thanks to Joost Jongerden, Yahya Madra, Mert Büyükkarabacak, and Muzaffer Kaya for their comments on earlier drafts. 2 For Kıvılcımlı, the “human being” is the most important component of productive forces. With the “human being” as a productive force, he is referring to the degree of existence of values like equality, honesty, and freedom in a socio-cultural environment. Kıvılcımlı assumes that the more these values structure a socio-cultural environment, the easier and more efficient the coordination and social actions of

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people would be. That is why he uses “human being” interchangeably with “collective action”. 3 The historical perspective developed by Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK, in his prison writings is very close to the “History Thesis”. According to Öcalan (2004: 53), the motor engine of society throughout history has been “the great resistance of communal social values” against the state and its hierarchical civilization. The resistance of communal values against the state finds its contemporary manifestation in the idea of the “democratic nation.” For an in-depth discussion of the idea of the “democratic nation”, see the contribution of Joost Jongerden in this volume. 4 Kıvılcımlı might have relied on Marx’s notorious description of French villagers of nineteenth century as a “sack of potatoes … who cannot represent themselves” (Marx 1976: 479). 5 Kıvılcımlı was familiar with the works of Durkheim. It is highly likely that he was inspired by Durkheim’s discussion over forms of solidarity and the division of labor when he coined his “organic division of labor”.

References Althusser, L. ([1971] 2014). On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. London: Verso. Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd rev. ed. London: Verso. Bloch, E. (1991). Heritage of Our Times. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bloch, E. (1996). The Principle of Hope: Volume One, 3rd ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Bora, T. (2016). Trajedisinden Başka. In: E. Türkmen and Ü. Özger, eds., Türkiye Solundan Portreler. Ankara: Dipnot Yayınevi, pp. 201–233. Chakrabarty, D. (2000a). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Durkheim, É. ([1893] 1984). The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Free Press. Engels, F. ([1884] 1976). The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. In: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels-Selected Works in Three Volumes: Volume 3, 3rd ed. Moscow: Progress Publishers, pp. 191–334. Erdoğan, N. (2019). Osmanlı Tarihinin Maddesi’nin Ruhu. In: G. Atılgan, ed., Mühürler: Türkiye Sosyalist Hareketinden Eserler. İstanbul: Yordam Kitap, pp. 59–108. Harootunian, H. (2005). Some Thoughts on Comparability and the Space-Time Problem. Boundary 2, 32(2), pp. 23–52. Hassan, Ü. (2010). İbn Haldun: Metodu ve Siyaset Teorisi, 4th ed. Ankara: Doğu Batı Yayınları. Hechter, M. (2000). Containing Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hudson, W. (1982). The Marxist Philosophy of Ernst Bloch. London: Macmillan. Karatani, K. (2014). The Structure of World History: From Modes of Production to Modes of Exchange. Durham: Duke University Press. Karatani, K. (2017). Nation and Aesthetics: On Kant and Freud. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Khaldun, I. ([1377] 2005). The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kıvılcımlı, H. ([1965] 2012). Tarih Devrim Sosyalizm, 3rd ed. İstanbul: Derleniş Yayınları. Kıvılcımlı, H. ([1965] 2018d). Tarih Devrim Sosyalizm Işığında İlkel Sosyalizmden Kapitalizme İlk Geçiş İngiltere, 2nd ed. İstanbul: Derleniş Yayınları.

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Kıvılcımlı, H. ([1970] 2014). 27 Mayıs ve Yön Hareketi’nin Sınıfsal Eleştirisi. İstanbul: Derleniş Yayınları. Kıvılcımlı, H. ([1970] 2018b). Toplum Biçimlerinin Gelişimi. İstanbul: Derleniş Yayınları. Kıvılcımlı, H. ([1970] n.d.). Devrim Zorlaması Demokratik Zortlama. Köxüz Yayınları. Kıvılcımlı ([1974] 2010). Osmanlı Tarihinin Maddesi-Birinci Cilt: Osmanlı Tarihinin Ruhu, 2nd ed. İstanbul: Derleniş Yayınları. Kıvılcımlı, H. ([1974] 2016). Üretim Nedir?, 5th ed. İstanbul: Derleniş Yayınları. Kıvılcımlı, H. ([1974] n.d). Tarih Yazıları. Köxüz Yayınları. Kıvılcımlı, H. (1980). Türkiye Köyü ve Sosyalizm. İstanbul: Derleniş Yayınları. Kıvılcımlı, H. (1999). Durum Yargılaması. İstanbul: Derleniş Yayınları. Kıvılcımlı, H. ([1999] 2018a). Allah Peygamber Kitap. İstanbul: Derleniş Yayınları. Kıvılcımlı, H. ([2000] 2018c). Komün Gücü. İstanbul: Derleniş Yayınları. Kıvılcımlı, H. (2008a). Gençliğe Yazılar. İstanbul: Sosyal İnsan Yayınları. Kıvılcımlı, H. (2008c). Dev-Genç Seminerleri. İstanbul: Sosyal İnsan Yayınları. Lukacs, G. ([1923] 1971). History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mann, M. (1984). The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results. European Journal of Sociology/Archives Européennes de Sociologie/Europäisches Archiv für Soziologie, 25(2), pp.185–213. Marx, K. ([1847] 1976). Wage, Labour and Capital. In: Karl Marx and Frederick EngelsSelected Works in Three Volumes: Volume 1, 3rd ed. Moscow: Progress Publishers, pp. 142–174. Marx, K. ([1852] 1976). The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels-Selected Works in Three Volumes: Volume 1, 3rd ed. Moscow: Progress Publishers, pp. 394–487. Marx, K. and Engels, F. ([1848] 1978). Manifesto of the Communist Party. In: R.C. Tucker, ed., The Marx- Engels Reader, 2nd ed. New York: Norton, pp. 3–6. Morgan, L.H. ([1877] 1964). Ancient Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Öcalan, A. (2004). Bir Halkı Savunmak. İstanbul: Çetin Yayınları. Sahlins, M. (2013). What Kinship Is-and Is Not? Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Satlıgan, N. (2006). TKP, Mihri Belli, Hikmet Kıvılcımlı. Devrimci Marksizm. http://www .devrimcimarksizm.net/sites/default/files/nail-satligan-tkp-mihri-belli-hikmet-k ivilcimli.pdf [Accessed 15 May 2020]. Scott, J. (2009). The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sorel, G. ([1908] 1999). Reflections on Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stalin, J.V. ([1913] 1953). Marxism and the National Question. In: J.V. Stalin Works Volume 2:1907-1913. Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, pp. 300–381. Terreblanche, S.J. (2010). The Tension between Ideological Closure and Hermeneutic Openness in Ernst Bloch’s Philosophy of Hope. In: J. McDonald and A.M. Stephenson, eds., The Resilience of Hope. Leiden: Rodopi, pp. 63–81. Tilly, C. (1990). Coercion, Capital, and European States Volume AD 990–1992. Oxford: Blackwell. Weber, E. (1976). Peasants into Frenchmen. The Modernization of Rural France 1870– 1914. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Weber, M. ([1905] 2001). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Routledge. Žižek, S. (2013). Preface: Bloch’s Ontology of Not-yet-Being. In: S. Zizek and P. Thompson, eds., The Privatization of Hope: Ernst Bloch and the Future of Utopia. Durham: Duke University Press, p. xx.

3 DREAMS AND REALITIES Do-it-yourself (autonomic) reincorporation by ex-insurgents in Colombia1 Julián Cortés Urquijo and Gerard Verschoor

“[N]ot every power needs to be a separate body above society. It is possible to build the other world we long for without going through that which has always been a nightmare for libertarians throughout history, beginning with Karl Marx: the state” (Zibechi 2010a: 1) “A spectre is haunting the continent, the spectre of autonomy” (Escobar 2018b: 59; own translation)

Introduction After more than 50 years of armed conf lict between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP), the National Liberation Army (ELN), paramilitary groups, and the Colombian army, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of displaced people, the FARC-EP and the Colombian government signed peace accords in November of 2016. Peace building, however, as Lalli (2006), Subedi (2014), Munive (2014), and Pugh (2005) argue, often faces difficulties and obstacles. One such difficulty is that, in the post-war situation, the Colombian government and FARC2 (now a political party) hold different views about the implementation of the accords. Underlying FARC’s position is their former national modernization project that involved institutional and agrarian reforms. In the context of what many consider a failed implementation of the peace accords, this project is presently being adapted and reshaped by ex-insurgents in different parts of the country – especially in the Territorial Spaces for Training and Reincorporation (ETCRs)3 and the New Areas of Reincorporation (NARs),4 the sites where ex-insurgents

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were relocated to. Echoing Richmond (2011), we argue that this reshaping and adaptation is not a haphazard, pragmatic way of solving needs; rather, it points to an infra-politics of peace building in which former rebel groups, drawing on their previous revolutionary practices and experiences, exercise a (local) politics beyond the State. During the war, the FARC-EP insurgency used to interact with peasant communities in different ways. In most cases, they put in place a rebel governance system based on selective incentives, justice adjudication, conf lict resolution, and community policing that was co-designed with rural communities. This governance system, which was anchored in a nation-based political project aiming to take over the Colombian State, allowed FARC-EP to effectively govern the regions under their control (Cortés 2017). This is the frame of reference of most ex-insurgents, and they hope that their new Party will continue to rally in support of this type of governance system. What is less clear to them though is how to materialize their political dream of “making a revolution” – especially when considering the less-than-favorable situation they now find themselves in (e.g., absence of weapons, losing popular bases due to their displacement to unfamiliar regions, losing local power, and so on). Going by experiences of other post-insurgencies (Sprenkels 2014), reincorporation of ex-insurgents in Colombia will probably entail a range of different survival strategies to cope with the uncertainties related to the government’s lack of commitment to implement the peace accords. For many of the ex-insurgents who pursue FARC-EP’s collective project, this practically means how to collectively obtain a sustainable income without official governmental support. In this context, ex-insurgents ask themselves important political and existential questions: will they have the time to make a revolution? Will they have the time left to think about revolution or a new society? These questions are especially expedient for ex-insurgents living in rural areas, who most probably will not participate in State or political party bureaucracies. The difficult circumstances notwithstanding (which include mounting and unpunished violence against ex-guerrillas and social leaders), ex-insurgents hope they will be able to revitalize the nation-based political project of the former guerrillas, including elements of the latter’s agrarian program (FARC-EP 1993), which can presently only be implemented locally and “beyond the state”. Ex-insurgents are keenly aware of the current Colombian government’s “hidden” (but easily perceptible) reincorporation agenda that follows standardized reintegration protocols but disregards or downplays important elements of the peace accords that are dear to the ex-rebels (e.g., collective approaches to reincorporation with a focus on gender and ethnic issues). Also, ex-insurgents are very worried about the clear intention of inserting them into neoliberal market logics on an individual basis, and there is mounting evidence that the country’s elites go out of their way to block the FARC’s political inf luence at the local and national level. This chapter describes and analyses an effort by ex-insurgents to put into practice an autonomous collective project beyond the State. This “do-it-yourself ”

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reincorporation project, which plays out in the La Fortuna cooperative (henceforth La Fortuna) in the Department of Antioquia, is based on an alternative vision of Nation in which both the practices and discourses of the former peasant guerrillas and the perceived betrayal of the peace accords by the State figure centrally.5 To describe the case, we use three concepts developed by the Educational Committee of Social Economies of the Common (ECOMUN)6 to give meaning to the process of reincorporation: “awakening”, “learning”, and “producing”. Theoretically, we draw on Scott’s (1990, 2008) “everyday forms of peasant resistance” and “infra-politics”, Rancière’s (1999) “disagreement politics”, Zibechi’s (2010a, 2010b) concept of “autonomy”, and Escobar’s (2018a) notion of “autonomic design”. We posit that the search for autonomy cannot be seen as “just” a local strategy to “resolve the problems” of the economic reincorporation of ex-insurgents; rather, this collective search is effectively a means for peasants and ex-rebels to resist neoliberal forces on the basis of FARC-EP’s alternative model of society7 – but now, without pursuing the control of managerial state apparatuses – and their own, contingent, experiences of the post-agreement. To gather information for this chapter, the first author undertook ethnographic fieldwork in La Fortuna and carried out in-depth interviews with key ex-insurgents from the cooperative.8 This was complemented by collective discussions with members of the Educational Committee of ECOMUN9 and ECOMUN’s board (of which the first author participated as a substitute board member). In what follows, we present our theoretical framework, a detailed description of the development of La Fortuna, a brief analysis of the case, and our conclusions regarding the local reshaping of the nation-based political discourse of the FARC through the development of autonomic experiences of reincorporation.

Reimagining peasant resistance and autonomy in peace-building contexts: A theoretical framework Reintegration of ex-insurgents into society after armed conf licts has typically followed traditional discourses of development in which [D]evelopment policy and planning, as well as much of what goes on under the banner of design, are central political technologies of patriarchal capitalist modernity and key elements in modernity’s constitution of a single globalized world. (Escobar 2018a: xiii) This particularly holds for Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) policies and programs that are “in line with the evolution of global peace, security, and development agendas” (Muggah and O’Donnell 2015: 3) and that assume that the market and (individual) entrepreneurial projects are essential, magic tools for the economic reintegration of ex-combatant populations ( Jennings 2009, Subedi 2014). In general, peace building has been conceived and

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planned through a neoliberal lens (Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013, Pugh 2005, 2011, Ramnarain 2013, Munive 2014, Selby 2016), making local populations “subjects of peacebuilding, state building, modernization, and development” (Richmond 2011: 1). However, in reintegration programs involving former insurgencies – especially those that are Marxist-inspired – it can be expected that some kind of contestation to neoliberal programs and developmental discourses will take place, particularly if ex-insurgents have a real interest in continuing the former struggle. Under peace-building conditions insurgencies usually change their political strategies (Sprenkels 2014) and their contestations may take different political forms, varying between the center (urban and globalized contexts) and the periphery (rural and localized contexts) – especially in the case of former agrarian armed movements. Thus, one can suggest the possibility of a transformation of the political dream to take over the State toward more localized and pragmatic political projects. In line with this suggestion, some scholars and activists have questioned the idea that national liberation movements are always “trapped” in their commitment to take control of the state or state-making (Öcalan, cited by Akkaya and Jongerden 2013: 192). Rather, they have argued that these movements may evolve into more locally rooted ones not necessarily in pursuit of prior ideals. But to what extent can these localized, political projects be seen as real alternatives to current neoliberal societies? Scott (2008), in exploring this question, has made visible the frequently unnoticed (but relevant) elements of social struggle that can nevertheless be seen as concrete political actions. According to Scott (2008: xvi), these elements “require little or no coordination or planning; they make use of implicit understandings and informal networks; they often represent a form of individual self-help; they typically avoid any direct, symbolic confrontation with authority” and, more often than not, they aim to reinforce local autonomy and, importantly, land ownership. Looking back at the former FARC-EP demands, it is clear that they were rooted in their negative perception of the level of development of Colombian society, based as they were on an orthodox Marxist view and inspired as they were by the Russian and Chinese revolutions and their systematized efforts in modernizing their countries. The nationalist thought of the FARC-EP and their continuous search for a “developed nation” have their roots in the reaction of leftist-Marxist movements towards uneven development (Nairn (1997) referring to the Gellnerian theory) between the center (European countries and North America) and the periphery (the Global South). From this perspective, nationalism can be seen as a form of resistance to underdevelopment. In fact, most Marxist discourses of Latin American guerrillas of the past century used the same leitmotif: development, and more specifically, rural/agrarian development. The political aim of the former FARC-EP as regards rural development was thus linked to the idea of modernization by “introducing modern agricultural techniques and marketing strategies” (Petras and Veltmeyer 2001: 106), the

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construction of infrastructure (roads), and technical assistance to the peasantry, as well as the most important demand by agrarian movements – land redistribution (FARC-EP 1993). Since the Colombian guerrillas did not accomplish their stated objectives, one could argue that their fifty-year struggle was unsuccessful. Even if the peace accords would have implemented the policies included in the agreement, implementation would not actually have meant fulfillment of the FARC-EP’s political dream. However, unfulfillment does not necessarily mean failure. As Scott (2008: 29) suggests, “even a failed revolt may achieve something: a few concessions from the state or landlords, a brief respite from new and painful relations of production and, not least, a memory of resistance and courage that may lie in wait for the future”. What kind of development, then, is at stake after signing the peace accords in 2016? What kind of new societies are being created in the post-conf lict era by those who were attempting to create a MarxistLeninist revolution in Colombia? Are local, ex-rebel communities in the process of reincorporation desiring their past dreams? We perceive that social movements have increasingly put autonomy at the center of their political claims. Likewise, many communities throughout the world have discovered that calls for autonomy could contest conventional development and modernization discourses, thus challenging the State as we know it (Zibechi 2010a, Akkaya and Jongerden 2013). In this chapter, we argue that ex-insurgents’ political struggles can also be seen as struggles for autonomy in that these offer an alternative to the traditional development and modernization discourses of reintegration programs. It is clear that, in light of this struggle for autonomy, conventional reintegration interventions will do all that lies within their reach to prevent this: These [development] programs seek to neutralize or modify networks and forms of solidarity, reciprocity, and mutual assistance that were created by the poor (los de abajo) in order to survive neoliberalism. Once the social ties and knowledge that assured their autonomy have disappeared, these sectors are easier to control. (Zibechi 2010a: 7) In defining autonomy, Zibechi (2010a) identifies two different ways of doing politics: one based on the limits imposed by the State and pursuing State power and another based on the strategies of los de abajo. In the first, the State essentially establishes the rules of the game, and achievements are obtained through interaction and negotiation between social organizations (political parties and other grassroots organizations) and the State. In the second, politics are carried out by practicing new forms of relations among men and women at the grassroots level. It is frequently assumed by policy makers and politicians that, in peace processes involving leftist movements, only a small number of ex-insurgents will eventually be involved in politics through participation in democratic elections within the concrete spaces given by the state apparatus (municipalities,

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presidency, Parliament, and so on). However, participation in this type of politics does not exhaust the political; indeed, the political often encompasses a local politics beyond the state (Rancière 1999). These politics become especially evident in the infra-politics (Scott 1990) of peace building “as a way of representing the local, everyday context” (Richmond 2011: 16) by way of, for example, the daily activities through which communities of ex-insurgents pursue autonomy – autonomy in the political sense in that it opens “fissures in the mechanisms of domination, shred[s] the fabric of social control, and disperse[s] institutions” (Zibechi 2010a: 11). Along with Scott (2008), then, we see autonomy as a structured form of (peasant) resistance that requires little or no manifest organization and that “confers immediate and concrete advantages, while at the same time denying resources to the appropriating classes” (Scott 2008: 296); its objective “is not directly to overthrow or transform a system of domination but rather to survive” (Scott 2008: 301). In his rendering of autonomy, Escobar (2018a) has recently addressed the design of autonomic processes, terming them “design for the transitions”. This design embodies an ontological approach in which “all design-led objects, tools, and even services bring about particular ways of being, knowing, and doing” (Escobar 2018a: x). Escobar also suggests that “the design for these transitions must involve a shift from traditional dualist ontologies (human-animal, developed-underdeveloped, men-women…) toward relational ontologies in which “all creation is collective, emergent, and relational; it involves historically and epistemically situated persons (never autonomous individuals)” (ibid, 2018a: xvi). In this sense, one can view Escobar as trying to reformulate Scott’s individual self-help concept of autonomy by imbuing it with collective and organizational elements that coalesce in a search for new possibilities and worlds. This chapter attempts to describe one such effort.

Designing an autonomic process of reincorporation: The “La Fortuna” Cooperative of Mutatá The peace accords, with respect to the process of reincorporating10 FARC-EP insurgents into society, basically involve a combination of cash incentives (90% of the minimum wage for two years11), vocational training, and individual or collective productive projects through cooperatives in which the State provides 8 million Colombian pesos (approximately 230 Euros) of seed capital to each ex-insurgent. Additionally, the peace accords include “incentives to farming and to the solidarity and cooperative economy” through ECOMUN (Acuerdo General 2017: 16). By the middle of 2020, approximately 130 cooperatives had been established in areas where ex-insurgents were located; these cooperatives are intended to provide farm products, agricultural supplies, handicrafts, and services – for example, related to culture, tourism, trade, communication, and video production. To have a more detailed summary of the different moments of the reincorporation process, see Figure 3.1.

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FIGURE 3.1

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Key moments of the reincorporation process of ex-insurgents of the FARC-EP. Author elaboration

Following the signing of the peace agreement in Colombia, in January of 2017 the 58th guerrilla front was instructed to settle in the Gallo vereda (rural district) in the municipality of Tierralta, in the Department of Córdoba (see Figure 3.2). In October of that year, 60 of the approximately 100 members of this group (including 20 women) decided to move to a rural area in the municipality of

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FIGURE 3.2

The arrival of the 58th guerrilla front to Gallo. Courtesy of Lilia Tavera

Mutatá, in the Department of Antioquia, where they created a NAR. As Rubén Cano – the front’s former commander – told us, this was due to several factors: their general distrust in the Colombian government, considering the absence of infrastructure in Gallo (see Figure 3.3) to support reincorporation; the legal impossibility of developing economic endeavors due to environmental restrictions; the existence of paramilitaries in Córdoba; lack of electricity and potable water; and the existence of better social and material conditions in Mutatá, where the guerrillas had a strong inf luence during the war. As a consequence of this decision, the State temporarily suspended food supplies to the group, reinitiating supplies almost a year after relocation. In Mutatá, the group bought 21 ha of forest and agricultural land using a collective fund of one million pesos per member, which came from the State at the beginning of the reincorporation process. This land is located in the San José de León vereda in a rural area of the municipality of Mutatá, 230 kilometers from Medellín – the capital of the Department of Antioquia. They chose this land because it included the right to use water from the river and because of its proximity (2 km) to the main road that leads to the towns of Chigorodó, Mutatá, and Apartadó. Upon settling, they distributed the land into three barrios (neighborhoods). Each of the escuadras (crews) they formed as guerrilla fighters designated one delegate to form a team to distribute the land among ex-insurgents. The design of the farm includes collective spaces such as the community house and the school and several small plots for fishing ponds. Similarly, they chose a collective 2 ha plot at the foot of the mountain for growing food (see Figure 3.4). Most of the ex-insurgents formed families after the signing of the peace treaty, and some now have children who are part of the community.

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FIGURE 3.3

Lack of infrastructure in Gallo. Courtesy of Maria Quiroz

FIGURE 3.4

Overview of the farm. Author photo

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Once each community member (or family)12 was allocated a plot of approximately one-third hectare, each family designed their home, and collectively built their wooden houses, beginning with those families with children or people with special needs. A team of five people felled trees located on their plots or nearby and distributed the lumber among all families, while approximately 10

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FIGURE 3.5

Improvised wooden beds (Caletas). Courtesy of Maria Quiroz

ex-insurgents built the houses. While their homes were being built, they lived in plastic huts with improvised wooden beds (caletas) such as they had used in the mountains during the war (see Figure 3.5). While building the houses, each family also prepared their agricultural plot, in most cases clearing virgin forest. In these plots, they removed many stones and prepared the soil for planting mainly plantains and cassava, and they constructed reservoirs for fish and sheds for chickens and pigs. Once most of the homes were built, they began to build a road covering approximately 2 km (see Figure 3.6) between the main road and their village with the help of construction materials and equipment supplied by the municipality (Misión de Verificación de la ONU en Colombia 2019, May 29). In their new territory, 60 ex-insurgents and their family members (a total of 80 people) from the Gallo vereda formed the “La Fortuna de Mutatá” cooperative to serve the organizational demands of enacting its reincorporation process. Currently, the cooperative has 65 associates (including 13 women and 14 members who were not insurgents). Its board of directors consists of a president, treasurer, secretary, and two advisors, as well as their substitutes. The cooperative also has the following committees: education, oversight, road construction and maintenance, crop agriculture, poultry raising, and fishing. The community leaders are Rubén, Ferley, Adriana, and Nader (some of them belong to the board of directors), who previously directed the guerrilla front and were easily approved by the ex-insurgent community. According to Adriana, the leaders’ role has been “fundamental to understanding collective

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FIGURE 3.6

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Aerial picture ex-insurgents working on the road. Author photo

work (…) Going to ask for services representing an individual is not as powerful as representing a collective”. When speaking of Rubén – who is not on the cooperative’s board but rather is a moral leader – she told us: “We know he’s not going to abandon us. He fights for us. He doesn’t work for himself; he wants the people to be OK”. Although Rubén is not the cooperative’s president or manager, due to his natural leadership, humbleness, commitment, experience in the war, and honesty with the community, he is held in high esteem. He points out that such a position must be won. Labor legitimizes leadership and authority; no one who has not successfully carried out a variety of community tasks such as farming, building houses, or constructing roads can assume a position of authority. Thus, labor practically legitimizes leadership and authority. In his experience, Rubén exhibits three traits of good leadership: speak the truth, lead people to success rather than failure, and listen to the people rather than ignoring them. In assessing his leadership difficulties, he explains: Human beings are difficult to lead. There are cultural differences depending on the region. In addition, the enemy has tried to divide us not only to win our grassroots supporters but also to force our leaders to make mistakes. Some of our people associate abandonment [by some of the cadres of

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the FARC] with the accommodation of other leaders living comfortably in the cities. The enemy is everywhere and benefits from our mistakes (…) People value leaders who accompany them more than those who just give orders. The cooperative’s board of directors works as a consulting service. While they listen to and analyze problems, only the Assembly has the authority to make decisions; the board of directors only implements these decisions. Thus, decision-making, planning of relocation, and development of the cooperative are collective processes. As Ferley states, “The community discusses matters and places the final seal on decisions made”. The cooperative’s board focuses on collective productive projects, member education, and legalization of the cooperative, as well as relations with government agencies, national and international NGOs, the FARC political party, and other actors. According to Ferley, two basic qualities distinguish their cooperative from those of other ex-insurgents’ communities: democracy and good leadership – exemplified by Rubén and his network of contacts in the region of Urabá, including grassroots organizations, which help him achieve a variety of objectives. Meanwhile, Soranyi highlights discipline, unity, cohesion, and democracy as the community’s most important values. Adriana notes that in assemblies and other meetings, problems and conf licts among members are addressed by a reconciliation council or the community as a whole, seeking a democratic solution by consensus. One guerrilla practice still used to help solve conf licts is the Leninist practice called “criticism and self-criticism” to identify and censure members’ mistakes and faults. During wartime, this practice was grounded in guerrilla ethics and statutes, and it now appears to be regulated by the community’s common sense. For a more comprehensive description of the process of designing and implementing this autonomic process, we use the emergent concepts of “awakening”, “learning”, and “producing” developed by the Educational Committee of ECOMUN (for which the first author has been carrying out an action research project) as part of a collective academic process of analysis of the general experience of ECOMUN cooperatives. These concepts are used here as sub-processes of this design for the purposes of description.

Awakening In this case study, awakening involves the ex-insurgents realizing that they must develop their collective path of reincorporation. As Rubén emphasizes, “If we do not seek solutions to these difficulties by ourselves, then we could fail”. Awakening implies recognizing the elitist nature of those in power and the expressed interest of the current far-right-wing government and its supporters, who wish to “shatter” the peace agreement.13 Critical of the policies designed to implement the peace agreement, Rubén questions the fact that the

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ZVTN was located in Gallo, arguing that the location was apparently chosen to “lead us on the road to failure”. They decided to leave Gallo during the Santos administration. When they realized that the peace process was being threatened, they decided they should rapidly take action. Adriana Tabera – former commander of the 58th front and cooperative member – expresses her mistrust of the Colombian government: [W]e were worried because time was passing (…) We have to take advantage of the basic stipend we have now. We have to do everything to survive, because if we believe that the government will give us eight million pesos, or land, or houses (…) you know the government isn’t going to fulfil its commitments. However, ex-insurgents differ in their perception of these problems and their necessary responses. Their perception of the fragility of implementation of the peace accords also generated discussion, debate, and tension, and decisions were made. In fact, in August 2019, a group of ex-guerrillas guided by the former leader of the peace delegation to Havana, Cuba – Iván Marquéz – again took up arms, reviving the FARC-EP in response to what they called a “betrayal of the peace treaty by the Colombian government” (FARC: Iván Márquez, exjefe 2019; 158 excombatientes retomarán 2020). Whereas the current leadership of the FARC perceives that implementation of the peace treaty has confronted “difficulties”, others – including Rubén – express concern regarding “obstacles” such as stagnation of the reincorporation process and other transformations promised by the peace treaty. Ferley similarly warns that the government’s intention is to “mamar” them (from the term “to breastfeed”, implying the intention of tiring them out). However, Rubén, Ferley, and most of the ex-insurgent population continue to be involved in the reincorporation process. “We do not trust the Colombian government, but we do believe in the peace process”, says Rubén. However, community members remain optimistic. Rubén stresses that the role of the United Nations has been to demand fulfillment of the agreement, and he emphasizes that despite current stagnation, the peace process will not fail: “We have already set roots with the local population and we believe in the commitment of some national and international sectors in defending the peace process”. Bladimir also highlights the need for raising awareness among the ex-insurgent population so that they continue to struggle for fulfillment of the accords. Adriana emphasizes that lack of access to land is a critical problem: “So many ex-guerrilleros do not have land. At least we have a place to live, but the rest have nothing”. She proposes, “We have to resist. We cannot leave new generations with the failure of this process”. Nader concludes: Whether or not the peace accords are fulfilled, we will continue forward. The only thing we request is that they [the government and paramilitaries]

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not prosecute us or kill us. That is enough. If we fall two or three times, we wake up two and three times. Awakening implies recognition of the reality of the current stagnation of the reincorporation process and of the need to prepare themselves to face the worst possible scenario – in this case the Colombian government exercising almost total carelessness of the reincorporation process.14 Ferley describes the La Fortuna community’s perception of the government in this manner: “We have said to our people: ‘We cannot bow our heads if the government does not fulfil its commitments’. We also cannot keep expecting father government to resolve our problems”. Thus, awakening implies raising awareness that being autonomous could be more effective in the reincorporation process than simply asking and waiting for international cooperation or State support. However, this does not exclude the possibility of receiving economic support at some point. It has to be clarified that this search for autonomy is not a mere consequence of the current situation in the territories; rather, it also represents traditional practices of the guerrilla in the territories in a time of war in which they sought to solve community necessities by their own means (Cortés 2017). Awakening also entails moving out of the comfort zone, which in this case involves breaking informal norms and defying government expectations. When the community decided to leave Gallo, government agencies were not prepared to accept such a decision to the extent that they initially banned the community from moving until it was pointed out that ex-insurgents had the same mobility rights as any Colombian. However, the decision to move had negative consequences for the entire group: disruption of services such as food supply, healthcare, and security provided by the Colombian army, and accompaniment by Colombia’s Office of the High Commissioner for Peace. However, other services such as vocational training programs and the work of the Reincorporation and Normalization Agency continued. Another interesting aspect of this community’s awakening that indicates autonomy is that no highly knowledgeable political actors from the FARC Party advised the community to make a certain decision. People made critical life decisions based on the knowledge they acquired during the war and thanks to the political ability of Rubén´s team of leaders. As Rubén described, “We did not call Pastor15 to ask for permission. We called him just to inform him about our decision”. The community realized that, at this stage of post-insurgency, they must make decisions by themselves without waiting for instructions as they did during the war. Later on, this community, as well as other ex-insurgent communities, began to interact with other national organizations such as ECOMUN without losing their autonomy, and they generated connectivity within a network of like-minded communities. The awakening of ex-insurgents determines their aspirations. Most speak of a future stage in which they will have everything they need. Bladimir expresses, “My dream is to work united to make productive projects work”. Others express

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their dreams in terms of access to education and land and living a dignified life (buen vivir). Many expect that, within a decade, San José de León will become a municipality recognized by the state. They also have great expectations of being successful in their productive projects, and most hope to avoid being employed, so as to have the freedom provided by autonomy.

Learning We understand learning as a sub-process of designing an autonomic process of reincorporation by which ex-insurgents carry out a variety of activities to acquire technical skills in order to develop their entrepreneurial capacities, obtain a job, or in general, earn a living. Learning also involves “reusing” knowledge acquired during the war – or learning to adapt and apply it – to survive during the reincorporation stage. Upon asking Rubén what they learned as insurgents, he states, We learned so much, to the extent that if we had not learned how to sleep under a piece of plastic and manage in the rain, in the swamp, we wouldn’t have become accustomed to these conditions in San Jose de León. Living under extreme conditions helped us deal with the temporary conditions of our new space (…) People who came here said that this place was not adapted to human beings, but people who have been in the war know very well that these conditions are normal. We know that a piece of plastic is our house (…) The knowledge we have was useful during the war and is still useful during peacetime. In general, ex-insurgents have a wide variety of knowledge and skills, including traditional medicine, basic construction, social work, social organizing, surviving difficult climatic conditions, making clothes, radio operation and other forms of communication, cooking, discipline, and collective work. Members of the La Fortuna cooperative highlight that unity, teamwork, planning, democracy, organization, management, independence from the government, and the capacity to work hard are their principal skills. When the State, NGOs, or other international agencies provide training – for example, basic education, vocational training, or in cooperativism – community members participate and make use of what they feel they need. As we witnessed in other ex-insurgent communities, at the beginning of the peace implementation process, such training appeared to be attractive and many people participated, but over time, some tired of traditional models of learning, as such educational models (for example, sitting inside in front of a teacher) were different from their way of “learning by doing” in the guerrilla. Furthermore, ex-insurgents found most of the training to be impractical due to a lack of infrastructure to put it into practice. This led to a loss of motivation and optimism regarding reincorporation. Nevertheless, interviewees highlight that the Confiar cooperative from Medellin,16 ECOMUN, and the government’s

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National Learning Service (SENA) provided them with valuable practical knowledge. Ex-insurgents learned other types of knowledge “by doing”, without receiving specific training. Building houses in San José de León was just such a case of ex-insurgents learning from experience. As part of this learning process, ex-insurgents needed to make individual and collective decisions and to earn a living. This is expressed by Rubén: “We now have to seek a daily wage for our clothes, to go to the doctor by ourselves (…) Our people were used to these things being resolved by the cadres”. Ex-insurgents therefore learned to no longer place their lives under the charge of their former commanders. During the war, boots, clothes, food, and weapons were somehow provided by their commander however they could, but in most cases, no one worried about earning a living. Ex-insurgents learned to earn a living in different ways depending on context and the internal arrangements of the ETCRs. In some areas, where former commanders had to go to urban centers to attend to political responsibilities, ex-insurgents felt abandoned and were forced to learn to make decisions by themselves. In other communities – such as that of the cooperative San Jose de León – as they did not feel abandoned by their leader, they assumed this process more slowly and in an “affective” manner. In such contexts, ex-insurgents put the “communist” qualities of their highly respected and even beloved commanders to the test. Thus, some ex-insurgents experienced a sort of “emancipation” involving personal and collective autonomy as well as a redefinition of their imaginaries of their former commanders. Such was the case of the troops led by commander Byron in the Meta region;17 his troops redefined their perception of him, rating him low due to their feelings of abandonment. Rubén and his team also learned to encourage community members to participate in developing their cooperative and in decision making, empowering them by making them more aware of their important role in the cooperative. As Ferley stated, “Here, the leadership was multiplied. We are no longer a small group of leaders; we are now a collective”. In general, the role of the cooperative assemblies in the learning process was first to guide the community in deciding what knowledge they wanted to acquire, who would provide them with training, and who should take any given education program. Second, assemblies helped the cooperative to define norms to promote harmonious coexistence within the community as insurgents did in the past in rural areas (Cortés 2017: 70). Ex-FARC communities also made a point of learning about cooperativism and solidarity economies. However, no comprehensive study of the myriad of solidarity economy practices (Gibson-Graham et al. 2013, Miller 2010) among ex-combatants exists. Although the guerrilla movement had formerly used practices such as barter, care economy, and alternative currencies, initially, all efforts were focused on legalizing their cooperatives and establishing productive projects, without incorporating other solidarity economy practices.

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Although ex-FARC cooperatives are involved in quite a few solidarity economy practices, they still have an excessively optimistic view of entrepreneurial, market-oriented schemes sold to, and naively accepted by, FARC-EP’s delegation during the Havana peace talks. In our opinion, this naiveté can partially be attributed to FARC-EP’s lack of understanding of daily life in urban areas – a life which differs radically from the necessity of making ends meet so characteristic of the Colombian countryside – as well as to their apparent lack of awareness of the mechanisms by which neoliberalism impacted the Colombian economy. Cases of small ex-insurgent businesses – such as “La Roja” artisanal beer company in the municipality of Icononzo, department of Tolima and “La Montaña”, a manufacturer of bags produced in the municipality of Anorí, department of Antioquia – that have been publicized as successful by the mass media (Forero 2019) have thus far not provided a steady income for those involved. However, these not yet successful business attempts are also part of the learning process by which ex-insurgents understand the logic of neoliberal markets. They bring about a change in attitudes, not only developing a pragmatic approach to earning a living but also reformulating the praxis of the solidarity economy to involve more radical practices, which – as in the case of La Fortuna – include agroecological production of their own food and building their own homes.

Producing A third sub-process of designing autonomic reincorporation processes (depending on the context) involves community members using their labor to produce goods and services for self-consumption and the sale of overstock. Initially, all community members focused on working collectively to build their houses and set up common spaces. Following this, collective labor began to give way to family and individual efforts to improve their families’ plots and productive projects. One issue discussed collectively was the division of labor; each member decided in which productive line (road building, agriculture, poultry raising, or fishing) they wished to work. Each of these areas was organized by a committee. In early 2018, they agreed to collectively work one day per week in their respective areas, and they designated a few people to feed the animals and care for the crops daily. Those who are unable to participate in the collective workday for whatever reason must pay a penalty fee to the cooperative. Women were complaining in recent assemblies regarding the amount of work they have to carry out, especially because, in the guerrilla, they used to do the same activities that men did, and considering that some women work additionally at home doing childcare, housework, and in family-productive projects, the community decided that the collective workday would only be compulsory for men, and single women who do not need to carry out these activities may join voluntarily. In addition, women (and some men) formed a gender collective to learn about and discuss feminism and new masculinities. In the near future, the community expects to implement several mechanisms to promote gender equality.

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Planning of family economic activities (such as poultry production at home and backyard agriculture, among others) is not collectivized but rather depends on free will. As of October 2019, there were 55 fishing ponds – nine of which are collective – with a total of 42,000 fish; 5 ha of plantain, cassava, and vegetables; 600 chickens; and nine pigs. Food provided by the government’s reincorporation food supply program supplements their family and collective food production. Each family provides their basic food supply and may sell overstock in nearby small towns with the support of the cooperative. The community has several small businesses such as a grocery store, a pub, a cooking gas store, and several small family-owned handicraft or clothing stores, all of which contribute to the local economy. The municipality pays a teacher from elsewhere to teach the children in a school built by the community. While healthcare is provided by government agencies, it does not compare to the former guerrilla healthcare system in which a physician was always available for the troops; currently no community members possess medical knowledge. Considering that the ECOMUN cooperatives have had little profit, they have not fully discussed the distribution of profits. However, in the case of La Fortuna, members have agreed on some general guidelines. First, as the State supplies a monthly stipend to ex-insurgents, they initially decided that no one should receive additional wages from the cooperative; however, this was recently modified in an assembly, allowing a few people to receive a small daily wage or a percentage of production for caring for the poultry or the crops. In this case, Ferley and Rubén support the idea of voluntary work by community members, especially given that a minimal stipend is provided by the State. Ferley emphatically states, “We cannot create a cooperative and believe that the cooperative is going to immediately resolve our economic situation; we first have to strengthen it”. Second, once sales of overstock increase, the cooperative may begin to pay more people. Third, earnings from collective projects should be reinvested in collective needs (maintenance of productive infrastructure, tools, supplies, etc.). Finally, those goods produced by families may be sold directly through the cooperative, raising the sale price to benefit the cooperative. Finally, discussing the benefits of autonomy, Rubén speaks of the advantages of not having a boss: “We work if we want to. If the day is rainy or too sunny we are not obligated to work. This is independence”.

Concluding discussion This chapter attempts to answer the following question: How do ex-insurgents’ local political projects compare with their former guerrilla political projects, and how does this affect current practices meant to develop (political, social, and economic) reincorporation into civilian life? The term autonomy best captures the answer to this question, as it represents a structured tactic of ex-rebel and peasant resistance that effectively faces the obstacles of the reincorporation process while

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revitalizing previous political imaginaries. Using the concepts of “awakening”, “learning”, and “producing”, we described how the design and implementation of this autonomic experience of reincorporation was carried out, and how ex-insurgents’ interests, life aspirations, knowledge, and political consciousness shaped La Fortuna as a collective life-form catering for the provision of goods and services. This implicitly represents the continuity of politics and the search for possible and alternative worlds. Our case illustrates that, since the signing of the peace agreement, communities and individuals in the process of reincorporation have experienced a process of awakening, challenging traditional schemes of neoliberal, top-down, and Statedriven reincorporation processes, while at the same time contesting forms of domination. For ex-insurgents, awakening has involved a political analysis of the community’s (and individual) aspirations based on dreams, desires, previous struggles, and a keen level of awareness of the concrete situation. This tallies with Escobar’s (2018a) observation that collective determination is crucial for transitions towards the creation of non-exploitative forms of life. Collective processes in La Fortuna furthermore show that ex-insurgents adapted their previous political discourses and practices to actual circumstances (i.e., the imposition of a neoliberal type of peacebuilding, the structural conditions of a neoliberal economy, local realities, internal dynamics of the ex-insurgent movement, and the local agency exercised by local actors in the process of reincorporation). The nation-based political dream of the FARC-EP, then, seems to have been adapted to current realities, incorporating previous demands – the former agrarian program of the FARC-EP – to feed a novel, localized political project built through trial and error, ref lected in continuous meetings, and evidenced in the everyday communitarian practices of learningby-doing. As the ex-rebels in La Fortuna show, the subaltern definitely can speak – and they speak through their political actions. Currently, the post-agreement political identity of ex-insurgent communities is closer to the development of local experiences of autonomy than to that of pursuing the control of the State apparatus. This is a big difference. As one can infer from La Fortuna, the State is perhaps the dream of the political party in urban centers – but not that of ex-insurgents in the territories. The latter now propose a new nation based on a political aspiration in which autonomy seems to be one of the main features. It thus seems that the tactics (and strategies) of the political party and rural ex-rebels are in tension. While the Party in the center (the capital city) is focused on parliamentarian activity and its consolidation in terms of bureaucratic organization, the ex-FARC communities in the periphery are carrying out political activities that are much more locally focused and more oriented towards the creation of autonomy and solidarity economies. It could be argued that the practices we describe for La Fortuna are but mere reactions to the current contingency or simply a pragmatic way of solving problems that are not dissimilar to those of communities in sort-like contexts. Be that as it may, one cannot reject the idea that ex-insurgents’ practices are highly

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politically inspired. As Scott (2008: 295) observes, “everyday peasant politics and everyday peasant resistance (and also, of course, everyday compliance) f lows from these same fundamental material needs”. We argue that this whole array of practices is part of a sort of peasant resistance in which other realms of political action have become more important; that is, we are witnessing the continuation of guerrilla resistance by other means. These practices are not evident enough to attract the attention of the State, yet they are hidden forms of resistance that come together to nurture a covert, anti-state struggle and to symbolize an elaborated form of self-determination. Since these practices are not fully advertised, they tend to pass as apparently innocent and unharmful. In line with Scott (1990) and Richmond (2011), one can suggest that these practices represent the infra-politics of reintegration programs in which “everyday life is representative of agency, of compliance, of resistance, and so often of hidden capacities” (Richmond 2011: 16). A possible interpretation of ex-insurgents’ practices would entail seeing these as a continuation of the class struggle under circumstances (i.e., the need to survive) that have decreased class consciousness and temporarily put on hold the goal of seizing State power. We would not agree with such a view, though. Ex-insurgents worry about material demands, yes, but they also struggle for the meanings and symbols of reincorporation. For the State, these are about showing that they can control ex-combatants by, in the end, disarming and defusing a “terrorist organization” and assimilating it into a neoliberal agenda through the different means it has at its disposal: by homogenizing the solidarity economy project and demanding cooperatives conform to complex protocols and statutes; by regulating the function and the development of the cooperatives; by introducing technologies to rule cooperatives (e.g., compulsory accountancy software, the obligatory issuing of invoices for all sales); by luring ex-rebels into all sorts of consumerism; or by spreading a free market mentality, individual competition, and entrepreneurial logics through training programs. But for the ex-insurgents of La Fortuna, the meanings and symbols of reincorporation are quite different: they are about the possibility to launch new political discourses – in this case, of solidarity economies and autonomy. Indeed, most of the practices we described point in this direction: the decision to move the settlement from one place to another without the State’s consent; the building of houses without construction permits; the design, layout, and construction of the road without authorities’ approval; the setting up of productive lines that did not follow traditional rules of entrepreneurship (e.g., producing what ex-insurgents need and want, rather than what the market needs); the artisanal and informal production of fish without institutional licenses; the building of their own school without the State’s intervention; the rejection of their subordination to anyone else (whether State or political party); and the refusal to engage in traditional employment opportunities (as they represent some sort of slavery which sacrifices personal freedom). As we see it, these local autonomic practices represent an outright rejection of the State’s and local and national elites’ agendas behind the implementation

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of the peace accords. In effect, ex-insurgents’ practices challenge State power and its incidence over communitarian life. Nation States have, since their inception, “displaced and then crushed a host of vernacular political forms” (Scott 2012: 82) that were very well able to address problems without a need for State intervention. When ex-insurgents tell the State “we need you to leave us alone” or “let us work”, they are somehow displacing their former guerrilla political assumptions in which, in the traditional Leninist approach, taking over the State was the major goal. In fact, comparing FARC’s (the Party) continuous calls to accomplish the implementation of the peace agreement with the practices of La Fortuna’s ex-insurgents, one can assert that these practices represent a fissure in the traditional political discourse of the insurgency – a fissure that is crying out: “we do not need anybody to tell us what to do”. As we recounted, other important elements underlying the infra-politics of this autonomic alternative are the territory, leadership, women’s participation, and creativity. For La Fortuna’s associates, their most immediate problem was lack of access to land, and, more broadly, territory. They could not visualize themselves in another scenario (such as in an urban environment, where they would likely feel lost). This search for territory represents a “strategy of relocalization” (Escobar 2018a: 74) in which ex-insurgents actively seek to settle in a specific territory in which they can realistically visualize a future for themselves. Importantly, the quality of leadership has helped ex-insurgents in La Fortuna make decisions about their lives and channel their collective dreams and desires through a process of co-design involving leaders and community members. As Escobar (2018a: 184) suggests, “Every community practices the design of itself ”. In this case, the group of leaders was not a foreign team that imposed a pre-designed formula. Its “experimental and open-ended qualities of prototyping” (Escobar 2018a: 55) allowed ex-insurgents to discover and develop innovative solutions to their problems. This experience of leadership is interesting, as it contradicts Zibechi’s (2010a) insistence on the relatively minor importance of leaders in autonomic processes. Regarding women’s participation, women have shifted the tasks they carried out as insurgents – typically the same as those of men – to engage in childcare, housework, raising crops, or caring for small livestock in their yards. While this would seem to push women back to the domestic sphere, women in La Fortuna nevertheless asked the Assembly to recognize their domestic labor and allow them to refrain from participating in the collective workday – thus demanding their reproductive labor be considered useful and valuable input to the community’s development and indeed an important step towards autonomy. Likewise, creativity in designing La Fortuna’s autonomic experience was important to challenging conventional models and practices of reintegration, and this often meant letting go of “acting as insurgents”. They did so, first, by replacing conventional communist party organizational practice (known as “democratic centralism”) with a more overt form of communitarian participation,

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shifting their pyramidal decision-making structure (useful in armed resistance) to horizontal decision-making by the Assembly. The leaders involved cooperative members in the design of the cooperative project, thereby disrupting the “distinction between expert and user/client” (Escobar 2018b: 34) – in this case between ex-commanders and troops. Second, the community stopped following orders from the FARC’s central leadership to the letter. Instead of being fully obedient, they prioritized their concrete situation over others’ considerations regarding their future. This allowed for a more open-minded approach to imagining other, possible worlds that are different, more locally rooted, or improved from those previously envisioned by the communist-socialist-nationalist project of the guerrilla movement. Third, they rejected the idea of State paternalism by recognizing its vertical and authoritarian political nature, and they appreciated their own efforts and previous experiences of autonomy and rebel governance in times of war (Cortés 2017). Fourth, the group of leaders began to consider community members not as simple followers of orders (as in the guerrilla movement) but rather as human beings with dreams and desires that should be attended to in order to achieve collective happiness. Fifth, ex-insurgents had to shift from an itinerant form of food production or gathering to a sedentary one in which food sovereignty is perceived to be critical to their survival. Finally, collective work diminished inasmuch as collective and individual needs were satisfied, but, in general, ex-insurgents attempted to maintain their collective organization as this provides them with confidence, trust in others, and mutual support. With respect to the difficulty of grassroots organizations to achieve autonomy, Zibechi (2010b) has discussed the subordination of local social movements by recent, progressive, leftist Latin American governments that have resulted in the appearance of new forms of domination. The subordination of ETCRs to the FARC can be seen as one such new form. However, in the present case, La Fortuna developed a high level of independence from the political party, which to some extent allowed it to avoid domination and renegotiate power relations. This independence, however, does not mean there is no room for future networks to articulate and coordinate different experiences in which respect for local processes and autonomies are needed. Such a network could challenge attempts by the current direction of the FARC party to develop an extremely hierarchical and centralized political organization. The experience of La Fortuna seems to open a post-accord scenario in which new forms of resistance f lourish in the voids left vacant by the State. Yet this is a difficult and often contradictory process as many communities in the process of reincorporation find themselves trapped in a tug of war between having to totally respect State norms or being totally independent from State rules (without being seen to violate the law). In the process, post-insurgencies (having been in illegal spaces for so long) may be tempted to blindly follow the norms of the State; conversely, by seeing and learning how their neighbors – peasants and local small merchants belonging to their social class – deal with the State’s rules, and in realizing that there seem not to be other alternatives, ex-insurgent may pursue or

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even copy practices that do not abide by the rules – but that are not necessarily illegal – just in order to survive. We feel that the development of practices of autonomy as a form of peasant resistance could greatly contribute not only to the successful economic reincorporation of ex-insurgents but also to the transition to other forms of living and to other political discourses somehow addressing, in a local manner, former revolutionary dreams. The current, apparently inoffensive activities of ex-insurgent communities are opening new springs of resistance; perhaps these will have strong and unanticipated effects on the imagination and extend their inf luence to develop organized, autonomous forms of peasant resistance – first in the terrain of infra-politics and later in a more open and visible ex-insurgent resistance.

Notes 1 Research for this chapter was partially funded by the Confiar Foundation through the Jorge Bernal Social Research Award granted to the first author. 2 There is a distinction between the FARC (the political party) and the FARC-EP, (the 2.0 version of the armed guerrillas founded in August, 2019). Militants of the political party presently debate whether or not to continue using the same acronym because of the association with the new guerrilla movement. 3 These were first called Transitional Zones of Normalization (ZVTNs). 4 NARs are new places that ex-insurgents decided to go to for reasons to do with security and distance to markets and their families. 5 A documentary entitled “Tejiendo Autonomía” on the case of San José de León has been produced by the first author; it is available at https://youtu.be/4aITQaL-bbk. 6 ECOMUN is the national cooperative umbrella project guiding social and economic reincorporation of ex-insurgents. 7 This dream started to take shape in the region of Marquetalia, Department of Tolima, where Manuel Marulanda and others were developing autonomic models of society (supported by peasant self-defense groups) in the early 1960s. Inf luential Conservatives considered these initiatives (which they called “republiquetas” or “little republics” and which were also developed in El Pato, Riochiquito, Guayabero, Natagaima, Coyaima, and Purificación) as threatening public order. Eventually, the Colombian Air Force bombed Marquetalia, killing many. A group of 48 peasant men and women who f led from the attack led by Manuel Marulanda formed FARC-EP in 1964. 8 Jhoverman (Rubén Cano), Lilia (Adriana Tabera), Bladimir, Julio, Ferley, and María (real names) are all ex-insurgents. 9 The Educational Committee of ECOMUN is comprised of ex-insurgents and ECOMUN advisors to productive projects, land access, and capacity building. As all committee members are Ad Honorem, the committee has not been able to achieve all their goals since created. However, they have produced some educational videos that have helped to clarify ex-insurgents’ doubts regarding issues such as the legalization of cooperatives and the peace agreement. 10 The Colombian government and the FARC debated use of the terms “reintegration” and “reinsertion”, which were used by a government agency in charge of demobilizing the paramilitaries (Colombian Agency for Reintegration of People and Armed Groups, ACR; currently Reincorporation and Normalization Agency, ARN). The FARC proposed the term “reincorporation” to differentiate the peace process from previous processes, and both parties agreed to use it in the final agreement instead of

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“reintegration” or “reinsertion”. In line with the Colombian peace accords, we use this term except when citing academic references that use another term. Approximately 200 Euros. After the second year, the Colombian government decided to continue providing this monthly allowance for an undefined period of time. From here on, when speaking of families, we include single members with the right to a piece of land in San José de León. One of the most famous far-right-wing politicians declared that his political party (Democratic Center) should “shatter the peace accords” as it did not represent its interests. That the government has been careless is not completely true, as it has developed some policies regarding reincorporation and invested economic and human resources in achieving some of its goals. However, these policies often fail to be implemented or fall short of what is needed, and much funding is lost to corruption or used for bureaucratic purposes. Pastor Alape is the FARC-EP ex-commander in charge of the reincorporation process. Confiar is a national financial cooperative which has strongly supported development of ex-insurgent cooperatives in different regions. Byron was a commander of the East Block of the FARC-EP (one of the regions in which the FARC-EP was militarily divided). After disarming, he had to move to Bogotá to take charge of several political and logistical tasks and thus had to leave the ETCR.

References Akkaya, A. & Jongerden, J. 2013, ‘Confederalism and autonomy in Turkey: The Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the reinvention of democracy’, In Gunes, C. & Zeydanlioglu, W. (Eds.). The Kurdish Question in Turkey, New Perspectives on Violence, Representation and Reconciliation, Routledge, Abingdon, UK, pp. 202–220. Cortés, J. 2017, The FARC-EP: Beyond the Rifles, Reaching the Hearts of the Colombian Peasants, MSc thesis, Sociology of development and Change group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands. https://edepot.wur.nl/464324. Cortés, J. 2020, Tejiendo Autonomía. Una experiencia de reincorporación de exinsurgentes de las FARC-EP. Pluriverso producciones, Bogotá, Colombia. https:// youtube/4aITQaL-bbk. Escobar, A. 2018a, Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, Durham, NC, Duke University Press. Escobar, A. 2018b, Otro Posible es Posible: Caminando hacia Las transiciones desde Abya Yala/ Afro/Latino-América, Ediciones desde Abajo, Bogotá, Colombia. FARC-EP. 1993, Programa Agrario de Los guerrilleros de las FARC-EP. Corregido y ampliado por la octava conferencia nacional de las FARC-EP. https://partidofarc.com.co/farc/wpcontent/uploads/2019/06/2.9-INFORMACION-ADICIONAL-PROGRAMA-A GRARIO-DE-LOS-GUERRILLEROS-DE-LAS-FARC.pdf. FARC: Iván Márquez, exjefe del equipo negociador de las FARC, anuncia que retoma la lucha armada en Colombia. 2019, BBC NEWS, 29 August. https://www.bbc.com/ mundo/noticias-america-latina-49509911. [20 January 2020]. Forero, S. 2019, ‘Los tres productos mas taquilleros de los excombatientes de las FARC’, El Espectador, 30 April. https://www.elespectador.com/colombia2020/pais/los-tres -productos-mas-taquilleros-de-los-excombatientes-de-las-farc-articulo-857922. [20 January 2020]. Gibson-Graham, J., Cameron, J. & Healy, S. 2013, Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.

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Jennings, K. 2009, ‘The political economy of DDR in Liberia: A gendered critique’, Conflict, Security and Development, 9(4), 475–494. doi:10.1080/14678800903345770. Lalli, M. 2006, ‘Reintegration of ex-combatants and former fighters: A lens into state formation and citizenship in Namibia’, Third World Quarterly, 27(6), 1119–1135. doi:10.1080/01436590600842407. Mac Ginty, R. & Richmond, O. 2013, ‘The local turn in peace building: A critical agenda for peace’, Third World Quarterly, 34(5), 763–783. doi:10.1080/01436597.201 3.800750. Mesa de Conversaciones en La Habana. 2016, Acuerdo Final para la Terminación del Conflicto y la Construcción de una Paz Estable y Duradera, Bogotá, Imprenta Nacional de Colombia. Retrieved from http://www.altocomisionadoparalapaz.gov.co/procesos-y -conversaciones/Documentos%20compartidos/24-11-2016NuevoAcuerdoFinal.pdf Miller, E. 2010, ‘Solidarity economy: Key concepts and issues’, In Kawano, E., Masterson, T. & Teller-Elsberg, J., Solidarity Economy I, Amherst, MA, Center for Popular Economics, pp. 25–41. Misión de Verificación de la ONU en Colombia 2019, San José de León construye su Ruta hacia La paz, Antioquia, Mutatá, YouTube video, 29 may. https://www.youtube.com/w atch?v=02drboJAzmM). [20 January 2018]. Muggah, R. & O'Donnell, C. 2015, ‘Next generation disarmament, demobilization and reintegration’, Stability: International Journal of Security and Development, 4(1), 1–12. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/sta.fs. Munive, J. 2014, ‘Invisible labour: The political economy of reintegration in South Sudan’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 8(4), 334–356. doi:10.1080/17502977 .2014.964451. Nairn, T. 1997, Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited, Verso, London and New York. Petras, J. & Veltmeyer, H. 2001, ‘Are Latin American peasant movements still a force for change? Some new paradigms revisited’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 28(2), 83–118. Doi: 10.1080/03066150108438767 Pugh, M. 2005, ‘The political economy of peacebuilding: A critical theory perspective’, International Journal of Peace Studies, 10(2), 23–42. http://www.jstor.org/stable /41852928. [23 October 2018]. Pugh, M. 2011, ‘Local agency and political economies of peacebuilding’, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 11(2), 308–320. doi:10.1111/j.1399-6576.2011.01113.x. Ramnarain, S. 2013, ‘The political economy of peacebuilding: The case of women's cooperatives in Nepal’, The Economics of Peace and Security Journal, 8(2), 26–34. doi:10.15355/epsj.8.2.26. Rancière, J. 1999, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. Richmond, O. 2011, A Post-Liberal Peace, Routledge, London and New York. Scott, J. 1990, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, Yale University Press, London. Scott, J. 2008, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, Yale university Press, London. Scott, J. 2012, Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaning ful Work and Play, Princeton, Princeton University Press. Selby, J. 2016, ‘The political economy of peace processes’, In Pugh, M., Cooper, N. & Turner, M. (Eds.). Whose Peace? Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding 2016, London, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 11–29. Sprenkels, R. 2014, Revolution and Accommodation: Post-Insurgency in el Salvador, Doctoral dissertation, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.

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Subedi, D. 2014, ‘Conf lict, combatants, and cash: Economic reintegration and livelihoods of ex-combatants in Nepal’, World Development, 59, 238–250. doi:10.1016/j. worlddev.2014.01.025. Zibechi, R. 2010a, Dispersing Power. Social Movement as Anti-State Movements, Oakland, CA, AK Press. Zibechi, R. 2010b, ‘Governments and movements: Autonomy or new forms of domination?’, Socialism and Democracy, 24(2), 1–7. 158 Excombatientes retomarán las armas en el Tolima, según comandante de las Farc. 2020, Ecos Del Conbeima, 31 January. http://www.ecosdelcombeima.com/region/no ta-151326-158-excombatientes-retomaran-las-armas-en-el-tolima-segun-comanda nte-de-las-farc. [20 January 2018].

PART II

Nation, pueblo, narod

4 VENEZUELA Revolutionary Bolivarianism against the colonial nation-state Dario Azzellini

The social transformation promoted in Venezuela under the presidency of Hugo Chávez (1999–2013) is often characterized as “nationalist” by scholars. Critics use the label “nationalist” with a negative connotation (Hawkins 2010). Sympathizers link “Bolivarian nationalism” to the nationalist tradition of the French Revolution and see it as “informed by Rousseauen principles of direct democracy” (Buxton 2009: 161) or in an anti-imperialist, Third World nationalist tradition.1 They all use definitions from European thinking. In this chapter I argue that analyzing revolutionary Bolivarianism – although it is antiimperialist and based on principles of direct democracy– based on concepts of European nationalism is not appropriate. Revolutionary Bolivarianism should be understood from the analytical perspective of constituent power and multitude. This marks a crucial difference with Rousseau. “The people” is not a homogenizing project; diversity remains alive in the multitude, which is also the source of the creation of the new without deriving it from the existing. Sovereignty relies on the people and is not transferable. Based on these premises, revolutionary Bolivarianism seeks to redefine “state” and “polity”, defining its own modernity in contrast to the European modernity connected inextricably with coloniality. Revolutionary Bolivarianism resonates with the communard tradition of socialism, indigenous forms of communal organization, and the selforganization of runaway slaves. By “revolutionary Bolivarianism” I refer to a genuinely Venezuelan revolutionary project that started to take shape in the guerrilla movements of the 1960s. It became the dominant set of ideas and practices for the radical transformation of society in Venezuela during the presidency of Hugo Chávez. While in constant development, revolutionary Bolivarianism is the set of ideas adopted by most social and popular movements in Venezuela and at the root of the most

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far-reaching initiatives of radical social transformation as the councils for local self-government and different forms of workers’ control (Azzellini 2017). Revolutionary Bolivarianism is not the only interpretation of Bolivarianism. Other currents of Bolivarianism are in fact in line with different traditions of nationalism and oriented toward a state-centered developmentalism and more in line with the statist tradition in the French Revolution. They always had a strong presence in institutions, competed with revolutionary Bolivarianism for popular hegemony, and became the dominant government discourse under Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro. Chávez’s extraordinary ability was to keep all the different currents together while further developing and strengthening a perspective of social and political transformation with a normative orientation of revolutionary Bolivarianism as nation-based radicalism. Revolutionary Bolivarianism is neither a homogenizing nation-state nationalism nor a promotion of an interclass national unity. It is in fact a decolonizing project breaking with modernity. “Modernity is a way to situate the European subjectivity as superior”, as decolonial theorist Enrique Dussel puts it (Dussel 2018: 37). Decolonial thinkers connect the beginning of European modernity with colonialism and especially with the colonialization of the Americas. Racism is a constituent principle of modernity structuring all social relations (Grosfoguel 2018: 68–70). Modernity negates and destroys any other form of understanding life and being; it builds and prioritizes societies understood as national over communities. The nation-state is the form of political authority privileged by modernity (Grosfoguel 2018). In his speech inaugurating the 2007–2013 term of his presidency, Hugo Chávez underlined that activating “The Constituent Power, which allows us to relativize, to break with the modernizing rationalism and open new spaces and times” was indispensable (Chávez 2007: 59). Chávez referred explicitly to Antonio Negri’s work on constituent power (Negri 1994) and quoted him (Chávez 2007: 59–60). The normative orientation of the transformation process proposes overcoming the state (and gradually substituting it with the communal state), since it is considered an integral product of capitalism. Thus, it cannot be the central agent of transformation in building the new model of socialist society. The socialist orientation, the idea of popular power, and the councilist initiatives of revolutionary Bolivarianism connect with the historical line of the commune and not with that of the state. Local self-government through direct democratic councils on various levels and workers’ self-management are considered the core instruments for social transformation. The central role of agent of change falls to constituent power. The mechanisms of transformation have to emerge from the popular movements and the organized people (pueblo). El pueblo is not understood as homogenizing concept. El pueblo is always composed of different parts, which maintain their diversity and come together in a social project. It is in no way predetermined by social status, nationality, or any other category. This logic attempts to overcome the logic of institutional representation and modern rationalism while taking away from the state the institutional monopoly over

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collective transformative action. Nevertheless, the power asymmetry between constituent and constituted power, the ongoing existence of a nation-state and a capitalist economy, and the necessity to defend sovereignty against external attacks have created severe contradictions and difficulties for the envisioned social transformation. In order to analyze revolutionary Bolivarianism as a non-nationalist form of nation-based radicalism it is necessary to first brief ly summarize some common definitions of “nation” and “nationalism”. I will then take a look at what is at the base of the non-homogenizing nationalism in Venezuela, the carrier of the nation-based project and the agent of social transformation: El pueblo, the people.2 How does revolutionary Bolivarianism define the pueblo? I will develop the notion of pueblo in a non-homogenizing way and contrast it with the European and Western model of “cultural homogenization”. Finally, I will analyze the concept and the practices of local self-government, which are considered the core mechanisms of a process of social transformation leading to the construction of a “communal state” (Azzellini 2013). I argue that it represents a progressive nation-based polity, which situates itself in a crisscrossing of relations, and accommodates multiplicity and plural forms of governance. The economy under construction in the alternative practices from below does not equal wealth with commodity nor fetishize growth. While the first and the second issue are at the center of the possibility to imagine nation in a non-nationalist way, the third area of inquiry breaks the apparently automatic link (of European and Western nationalism) between nation and state-building with territorial homogeneity regarding norms and institutions (or ethnical homogeneity regarding norms and institutions in some more complex cases).

Nation and nationalism In daily language and media terms, as “nation”, “nationalism”, “people”, “state”, and “country” are often used interchangeably, clear concepts and distinctions are missing. In academia “one is clearly faced with a range of different theoretical conceptions and theories about the nation as a historical and social phenomenon” (Lægaard 2007: 40). Although in the end they stem mainly from analysis of the European experience and, to be more precise, from the European experience linked to modern nation state building.3 Nevertheless, terms, symbols, and practices have different meanings in different languages and contexts, and they are used and understood differently by different authors and people. To recognize this is even more important when we are looking at a non-European or nonWestern society. To analyze and understand Venezuela we have to decolonize our thinking. Not doing so will inevitably lead to wrong conclusions. Nationalism scholars have differentiated between “civic nationalism” and “ethnic nationalism”. Ethnic nationalism postulates a nation based on a “primarily ethnic or ethnocultural community bound together by myths of shared descent, and by cultural markers such as common language, practices

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and values” (Lægaard 2007: 41–42). People and nation are interchangeable. The people are – as German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte defined it in 1808 – a “community of fate” (Schicksalsgemeinschaft) with the historic task of nation (state) building (Fichte 2008).4 “Civic nationalism” has its origins in the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. The nation is conceived of as “a community of citizens of the territorial state”, which is a voluntary association along the lines of the doctrine of popular sovereignty, that is, as individuals bound together by their shared allegiance and consent to political institutions governing the state in their name and limited by respect for their individual rights. (Lægaard 2007: 41) Meanwhile, as Lægaard shows, most scholars agree that “all nations are a mix of civic and ethnic elements in different proportions and ways” (Lægaard 2007: 42). Both concepts, and therefore also their hybrid forms, are based on what Gellner described as “homogenizing nationalism” (2006), “a situation in which ethnicity, language, and culture overlap under the umbrella of securitizing ethnonational boundaries” (Conversi 2007: 377). Nationalism is then “primarily a principle which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent” (Gellner 2006: 1). Gellner situated the birth of homogenizing nationalism in modernity and industrialization. Industrialization caused mass dislocation and therefore homogenization, and interclass coalitions are forged with an apparently egalitarian nationalism (Gellner 2006). Conversi (2007, 2008) moves away from Gellner’s focus and argues that the basis for cultural homogenization was set in the military when it turned to mass conscription in a mutual relationship with the adopted education system. “[U]ltimately the monolingual school had a model in the army and, in turn, it churned out likely, willing soldiers, even before it could shape loyal citizens” (Conversi 2007: 387).5 Without entering the debate (although I would agree with Conversi’s primary point about the dominant European nationalisms), I will take a brief look how the different elements played a role in Venezuela. Venezuela is not considered an industrialized society, which is the focus of other nationalism studies such as Gellner’s and Conversi’s. It is also not an agricultural society. Venezuela is the second most urbanized country of Latin America after Uruguay, with 87 percent of its population living in urban areas, mainly on 10 percent of the national territory along the coast. Industrial density for 1,000 inhabitants is only 0.25 (compared to 1.2 in Colombia and 1.7 in Mexico (Álvarez R. 2011)). Oil has been the major source of the country’s income for more than a century. The oil industry employs a relatively small number of people compared to its revenues. The extractive economic model turned Venezuela in a rentier state, with huge imports, little production, and a large service and commerce sector.

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Early Venezuelan nationalism was inf luenced by nationalist concepts from Spain and France. Nevertheless, it remained mainly limited to the Creole elites. They did not see the poor, the indigenous, Afro-Venezuelan, and mestizos as part of that new nation (and they opposed Bolívar’s abolition of slavery). This is a view characteristic of the Venezuelan elites of European descent that has not changed until today (López 2015, Palast 2019). The first national modernization project was initiated by General Antonio Guzmán Blanco, who seized power by invading Caracas in 1870 and who ruled intermittently until 1887. Under his rule railway connections, telegraph lines, aqueducts, roads, and bridges were built; plantations and ports were connected with Caracas, which was thus transformed into a representative capital following the classical European model; education and science were promoted; and the separation of church and state was accomplished (Silva Luongo 2000). Nevertheless, while in Europe much “of the industrial infrastructure, such as railroads and other communication networks, aimed at rapidly supplying standing armies in both peace and war times” (Conversi 2008: 1308–1308), which were a central factor of homogenizing nationalism, Venezuela at that point did not even have a national army. It was still dominated by independent regional and local militias under the orders of powerful Caudillos. The national army was rebuilt and the militias banned by General Cipriano Castro, who seized power through a coup d’état in 1899 (Silva Luongo 2000). It was only under the social democratic president Rómulo Betancourt’s second presidency (1959–1964) that a cultural homogenizing nationalism became prominent, trying to present Venezuela as a modern nation with wild and exotic roots but still strongly European (its best-known expressions outside Venezuela were the Telenovelas and the “Miss industry”, producing beauty queens for global contest). Ethnic, color, or class differences were denied and presented as a harmonic mix. Betancourt served his first term after the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez was overthrown on January 23, 1958. Pérez Jiménez had prevailed in 1952 as the sole dictator in the junta that had come to power through a US-backed coup in November 1948. His reign was marked by brutal repression, rampant corruption, and absolute allegiance to the US. The dictatorship banned the social democratic Acción Democrática (AD), the Communist Party (PCV), and most unions. Pérez Jiménez was overthrown by an alliance built between the banned AD and PCV, the Christian-Social Copei (Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente), the liberal Unión Republicana Democrática (URD), the majority of the business sectors, and part of the military, based on a massive unionist and leftist popular mobilization. The political, social, and economic model for Venezuela, which involved a mixed economy and loyalty to the US, had been established prior to the elections through the pact of Punto Fijo, signed by the leadership of AD, Copei, and URD (which left the government in 1960 and became insignificant), in which the parties pledged to act in consensus. The result was a populist system of elite reconciliation that also accommodated employers’ associations, the leaders of the military, the trade unions, and the

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Catholic church. AD and Copei occupied the entire institutional space of interaction with the state until 1999. The corrupt system of following the powersharing arrangement, which excluded the majority of the population from social and economic benefits, led to a crisis that provoked a popular uprising in 1992 and Chávez’s electoral victory in 1998. The promise of prosperity and the quality of modernity had failed; class and race differences were more than obvious; and Chávez and the Bolivarian movement turned against everything the prior regime represented (Azzellini 2019). In opposition to modernity and coloniality, among the five foundational figures of revolutionary Bolivarianism we find Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan liberator and general who fought for independence throughout South America and who promoted the unification of the continent; his philosophy teacher Simón Rodríguez, who frequented utopian socialist circles; the peasant general of the federal war, Ezequiel Zamora; and the indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan resistance. Zamora embodies the postcolonial and ongoing struggle for justice and democracy; he was known for burning the manor houses and redistributing the land to peasants (Azzellini 2009c); and the indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan resistance embodies the holistic, decolonial perspective. Under Chávez the access to education from primary school to university was massively increased, and millions of Venezuelans gained access. Nevertheless, the education system does not aim at cultural homogenization as “a subtractive process, involving the negation of the existence of separate groups, cultures, beliefs, languages, traditions, and ideas within the same polity” (Conversi 2007: 388). On the contrary, policies of bilingual education were enacted in indigenous communities in order to preserve indigenous cultures. The history and cultural practices of indigenous people and Afro-Venezuelans became part of the school curricula and of national history, adding symbolically important figures of indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan history (as leaders of slave revolts and of the struggle against colonialization) to the National Pantheon. A central role for mass access to education was played by the so-called “missions”, educational courses in the communities joined by millions of people for alphabetization, primary school, secondary school, and high school. They lack the disciplinary aspects underlined by Foucault. Learning groups in the missions are self-organized and schooling takes place in self-organized available places. As Andrés Antillano, activist and sociologist from the poor Caracas’ neighborhood La Vega, explained, he first thought that the Cuban videos used in the alphabetization courses were not political enough until he realized that the experience of being the agents of a selfadministered education process in order to overcome their own marginalization had turned the participants into active members of the community participating in and organizing a huge variety of activities (Antillano 2008). While the military plays a major role in Venezuelan society and its size has increased due to a real threat of US intervention, a proxy war involving Colombia, and terrorist attacks and acts of sabotage against infrastructure and oil production, it cannot be compared to the military described by Gellner. Although the military

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has always had homogenizing and disciplinary characteristics, its role in Venezuela is ambiguous for a number of reasons. Venezuela has no military conscription. The modern history of the Venezuelan military is marked by rebellions and disobedience from below. Together with a leftist mass movement and the bourgeois parties, the military participated in overthrowing the Pérez Jiménez dictatorship in 1958. The bourgeois parties seized power and marginalized the left. Until 1962, the military, in alliances with guerrillas and leftist forces, staged three attempts at overthrowing the corrupt system of elite reconciliation (Azzellini, 2009b). The theorists of revolutionary Bolivarianism defined an alliance between guerrillas, the military, and an insurrectional mass movement as the Venezuelan way to socialism, and leftist organizations infiltrated the military (Azzellini 2009a). Chávez himself is an example of military disobedience and insubordination. He founded a clandestine organization inside the army formed mainly by middle-ranked officers that tried to overthrow the government with a military insurrection coordinated with leftist organizations in February 1992. After he failed, another leftist organization in the military tried the same in November 1992 (Azzellini and Wilpert 2009). It was also the insubordination of lower-ranked military members in combination with a mass mobilization from below that brought Chávez back into the presidential palace only three days after a military coup of the high command in April 2002.

The people as non-homogenizing multiplicity According to revolutionary Bolivarianism, pueblo is always composed of different parts, which maintain their diversity and come together in a social project. It is a community built on heterogeneity. It is an open category, constituted in struggle, that people can join. Pueblo is in no way predetermined by social status, ethnicity, language, nationality, or any other category. It is not composed of “the poor” or “the oppressed” as such but is collectively constituted in relation to specific struggles and in a struggle for a social project in which all struggles can have a place (Acha 2007: 19). What characterizes other struggles that “do not promote a policy of homogenization and centralization of political action, that is, they do not propose to be a synthesis” (Tischler 2007) – that of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, for example – can also be applied to the process of change in Venezuela. Pueblo is not homogenizing; it does not deny diversity. The government’s official discourse, and more explicitly that of Chávez, has been directed to the “sovereign pueblo”, referring to the marginalized majority of the population. Chávez explicitly rejected the term “mass” and was accustomed to speak of the pueblo, and in some cases the multitude (Chávez Frías 2008: 66), precisely in order to make multiplicity visible. Chávez reinforced his classoriented discourse by declaring a socialist orientation in 2005. In November 2008, with reference to Marx, Chávez declared: I firmly believe that our battle is an expression of the class struggle. The pueblo, the popular classes, and the poor against the rich. And the rich

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against the poor. That’s the broad outline, though one needs to know how to appreciate its subtleties and intermediate stages.6 Chávez included the diversity of struggles and organizations in his discourse, and at the same time he directed his discourse to specific elements of the pueblo – to workers, barrios, peasants, women, youth, LGBT, disabled people, etc., and included indigenous people and Afro-Venezuelans, who look back on centuries of oppression and struggle. With his constant positive references to Venezuela’s indigenous and African heritage, including himself, he underlined diversity and contributed centrally to empowering the population.7 Chávez did not speak for the poor and the marginalized but added his voice to theirs. He did not situate himself in any way above others; he picked up existing popular practices and discussions, presenting them to a broader public; he referred extensively to the books he read and where his ideas came from; and finally he included himself, through reference to his family and personal history and his black and indigenous heritage, as part of the pueblo. This is why the opposition, with its bourgeois, racist, and classist culture within a Eurocentric colonial tradition, despised Chávez so heartily: they saw him as part of the “rabble”. In the face of the opposition’s accusations of chavistas being chusma (rabble), Chávez answered, “yes, we’re the same chusma who followed Bolívar” (Herrera Salas 2004: 124). Multiple, diverse, and contradictory, it is the pueblo of the oppressed, the presentday form of Víctor Hugo’s Les Misérables or of Los de Abajo in Mariano Azuela’s novel of the Mexican Revolution.8 The counterpart of the pueblo is the oligarchy. Although some opposition politicians and parties have adapted the term pueblo to fit their discourse to the new social context, the middle and upper classes do not see themselves as pueblo. They identify as gente (people) – good people, decent people (gente, gente bien, gente decente) – while viewing the pueblo as comprised of poor people and marginals (Moreno 1999, 2005, Parker 2006: 90). According to Mazzeo, who comes from the Darío Santillán Popular Front organization of Argentina, pueblo is an “ethico-political and dialectical” category, and because of that it is constitutive praxis. (…) We say that the “masses,” the “multitudes,” transform into pueblos (…) when they are constituted in collective organizations, social movements, political liberation movements; that the pueblo is the form through which the collective project of the exploited begins to be realized; that it is the will and the utopia of subalterns that conjures some, but not all, contradictions and paradoxes. This notion of pueblo does not presuppose division, but refers more to linkage among distinct fragments of the subaltern classes. (Mazzeo 2007: 41–42) For socialism, pueblo is the formula that articulates subaltern pluralities; the rough outline of struggles, creations, and resistances of those from below; the name of a revolutionary subject self-created in a class struggle. Erected

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against hegemony, its universal signification derives from the particularity of its organized base. Its horizon is a collective creation. (Miguel Mazzeo and Fernando Stratta 2007: 10) The widest focus of class, the multiplicity of actors in the process of change, and the recognition of the variety of struggles: all these elements are at the roots of revolutionary Bolivarianism. Even politico-military organizations like the Partido de la Revolución Venezolana (Venezuelan Revolutionary Party, PRV) or later the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupamaro (Revolutionary Movement Tupamaro, MRT) were already diverging in the 1970s and 80s from traditional concepts with their analyses of class, taking as points of reference a wide range of struggles, including those of neighborhood residents, indigenous peoples, AfroVenezuelans, cultural movements, sexual diversity movements, and sex workers. In the 1970s the PRV referred to the “crowd” (muchedumbre) to indicate the diversity of the pueblo as a community in struggle. The common use of pueblo in Venezuela includes the characteristics of difference, of crowd, and of multitude; it has several characteristics in common with the multitude of Antonio Negri. The pueblo has no determined position in the production process and is organized in the form of a centerless web. There is no predetermined part of the pueblo with a central role assigned. This pueblo-multitude does not seek unity in the state but in the building of “a world in which many worlds fit,” as the Zapatistas in Mexico express it. Nevertheless, there are important differences. The pueblo is constituted in relation to struggle and, unlike Negri’s multitude, the pueblo in Venezuela does “sign pacts” with the end of better accomplishing its goals and consolidating its gains. We as a pueblo have given everything. We have gone out to the street every time they have asked us because we believe in it, we know that the hope of all of us, is the hope of the humble people who are with comandante Chávez, and for this we struggle and for this we defend the revolution.9 By doing so, the pueblo neither delegates nor surrenders its sovereignty; rather, it tries to create a framework for amplifying its sovereignty. Complying with “pacts” and the conditions of compliance are constantly redefined in a relation of conf lict and cooperation. Transformation is a non-linear process beset with ruptures. Analysis of mobilizations and struggles in Venezuela provides evidence that “the marginalized” cannot be reduced to a specific actor. On the contrary, it is precisely from the variety and multiplicity of the struggles that the Bolivarian process derives its revolutionary potential. Between the organizations and movements that participate in and support the transformation process, we find neighborhood residents organized in communal councils, laborers, and informal workers like motorcycle taxi drivers, street vendors, peasants, women, migrants,

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indigenous people, Afro-Venezuelans, ecologists, producers of independent media, LGBT people, and others. Iturriza writes: The multiplicity of actors implies the multiplication of fronts for struggle, the diversity of strategies of struggle for radical democratization of Venezuelan society, and its capacity for mobilization to defend the revolutionary process when it has been in danger. (Iturriza López 2007: 6) According to the conceptual elucidations of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and the debates within the popular movements, the principal agent of change is understood to be the constituent power, that is, the legitimate collective creative power inherent in human beings, as expressed in the social movements and the organized social base. It is the capacity to originate something new without having to derive it from or subject it to something that already exists. At the same time, the constituted power – the state and its institutions – must guarantee the framework and material conditions of the process (Chávez 2008). The idea of a dynamic relationship between constituent and constituted power became an official normative reference under Chávez’s presidency. The understanding of constituent power as the force that creates a new society developed in Venezuela during the late 1980s as an idea of social transformation through a continuous constituent process. As the 1990s progressed, this conception became critically important for the movements, while its affinity with Negri’s book Constituent Power (Il Potere Costituente) was discovered (Denis 2001: 143–144). The book played a fundamental role in the development of the Bolivarian project; Chávez quoted from it often, claiming to have read it in prison (Chávez Frías 2007: 2, 2008: 47, Harnecker 2002: 18). Chávez referred often to the concept of constituent power without romanticizing the controversial aspects: Constituent Power is a complicated thing. It is not something that you call for, that comes, shows up, and then you ask it to go away. No, Constituent Power cannot be frozen; it cannot be frozen by constituted power. (...) Some authors talk about how terrible Constituent Power is. I think that Constituent Power is terrible, but we need it that way: terrible, complex, rebellious. (...) Constituent Power is and should be permanent power, transformative power. (...) Constituent Power allows us (...) to break away from modernizing rationalism and to open new spaces and new times, which is why it is essential that we activate it, call for it, (...) break down the category of the modern (...) that pretends to solidify the time and solidify the space behind the death mask of rationalism. (Chávez 2007: 3–5)

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At first sight, constituent power might appear as a redefinition of Rousseau’s general will; however, there are profound differences. As Negri points out, Rousseau’s concept is ambiguous. On the one hand, it can be seen as the empowerment of the people and a display of support toward a free and nonsubordinated constituted power – as it was understood by the revolutionaries. On the other hand, for Rousseau, the will of all becomes the general will, and with that the people become one. This is not the case in the concept of constituent power, which is based on diversity. From the viewpoint of constituent power, general will also paves the ground for the transfer of power to constituted power by connecting the general will not to democracy but to the Republic and the nation, and subsequently – once the Republic is founded – transferring sovereignty from constituent power to the parliamentary representatives (Negri 1994: 241–263). In revolutionary Bolivarianism sovereignty resides in and is not transferable from the pueblo. The National Economic and Social Development Plan 2007–2013 (MinCI 2007) postulates organization and collectivity, respecting autonomy and liberty, as the basis of revolutionary democracy: “given that sovereignty resides in the pueblo, it can direct the state on its own, without needing to delegate its sovereignty, as happens in practice with representative or indirect democracy” (MinCI 2007: 30). However, the strengthening of institutions and the presence of the state bring a growing bureaucratization, which impedes transformation and tends toward institutional administration of social processes. The organizations and organized movements adhering to revolutionary Bolivarianism have a very clear idea of the relationship between constituted and constituent power. Andrés Antillano of the Urban Land Committees (CTU) and the Settlers’ Movement (MDP) explains:10 We have always said that we must make progress in building the new society with the state, without the state and against the state. In other words, our relationship with the state is not defined by us, but by the willingness of the state to subordinate itself to the interests of the people. (2008) At the heart of the construction of a socialist society, according to revolutionary Bolivarianism, is the council system. It finds its strongest expression in the local self-government through Communal Councils (CCs) and Communes existing parallel to the formal institutions, building a system of plural forms of governance.

Communal Councils, Communes, and the communal state From the year 2000 onwards, popular organizations, communities, and even some institutions developed various local self-government initiatives. In 2005, from those experiences the Communal Councils arose as self-administration at the neighborhood level, followed by the Communes in 2007 as

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the tier above that. Both are non-representative forms of self-government based on assemblies and direct democracy. Chávez placed them at the center of his public discourse, presented them as good practices, visited them with his weekly TV show, and promoted legal and institutional initiatives in their support. This gave them a significant boost. Chávez defined the CCs as constituent power (Chávez 2008: 15). In fact, the CCs have the potential to be an institution of constituent power at the level of the community (understood as a social relation, not as an administrative entity). CCs and Communes developed from below. Although their massive expansion was due to formal support by the state, the laws regulating them were only devised after they had become a widespread practice. Out of the different experiences and initiatives, an outline emerged from below of what Chávez called “the communal state”, which has become the political and social project of the popular movements in Venezuela. The first Law of Communal Councils was passed in April 2006, when some 5,000 CCs had already been formed. Informed by past experiences, the law defined CCs as small entities and independent institutions. CCs rapidly became the central mechanism for participation; as such, they were the organizational form on which the greatest expectations were placed, especially by the popular sectors. The law was reformed in 2009. According to the new law, in urban areas each CC comprises between 150 and 400 households, while in rural areas around 30 and in indigenous areas 10 to 20 (LOCC 2009). The council is the community assembly of all inhabitants. The CCs form committees on different issues depending on their needs and interests: infrastructure, health, water, sports, culture, etc. The community appoints committees, elects spokespeople for each workgroup, and designates a technical organizing committee for the council. They have no power of decision; all decisions are made by the general assembly of the community. Committees elaborate proposals in their respective fields, which are submitted to the CC for approval. The projects are then financed by public institutions or with the community’s own means. This creates the possibility of having more community-centered and independent projectand decision-making (Azzellini 2017: 93–123). In 2007, the Communes emerged from below. A Commune is made up of several CCs (around 10 in rural areas and 20 to 40 in urban areas) and other organizations within the same territory; it can develop longer-term projects and measures over a wider area, while decisions continue to be taken in the CC assemblies. Communes coordinate the CCs, social missions,11 and grassroots organizations so that projects are planned, implemented, and assessed jointly (Azzellini 2017: 81–124; 243–251). As Melisa Orellana of the Frente Nacional Comunal Simón Bolívar (FNCSB) explains, building a Commune includes taking over various functions generally performed by the state: The establishment of the Comuna has to do with the whole community. We would like to share this experience and to strengthen it from the

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grassroots level on, that’s how we understand people’s power. Concerning the political, the economic, the cultural and the military level. (Azzellini and Ressler 2011) Both CCs and Communes strive for consensus. Individual decisions are also voted on but rarely decided by a simple majority. Spokespeople, coordinators, and people in charge of specific tasks are elected. They usually have no (or limited) decisionmaking power and can be recalled at any time by the assembly that elected them (Azzellini 2017: 124–156). The idea of local self-administration is rooted in the historical experiences of struggle and resistance against colonialization, slavery, and assimilation of indigenous people and Afro-Venezuelans (and more generally Afro-Americans) in the thought of Latin American Marxists, such as Peruvian José Carlos Mariátegui, in the concept of popular power (poder popular), and in different socialist and councilist experiences and currents. In the area of Barlovento, Afro-Venezuelan Communes call themselves cumbes, referring to the maroon communes created during slavery times. Affinity-based councils were also created (e.g., by fishermen, peasants, students, the disabled and others). They did not evolve into structures of broad participation and became mostly mechanisms that only convened on rare occasions to discuss law initiatives. In 2007, president Chávez launched the idea of communal cities as a level of self-administration above the Communes. Communal cities consist in the coordination of Communes within a self-defined territory. Although some rural Communes started to coordinate and declared themselves communal cities, no broader public debate or law followed. To this day, the discussion – as well as the practice – revolves mainly around the Communes. By February 2021, the official number of CCs had reached 48,589, while the number of Communes was 3,269.12 The council structure exists parallel to the structures of representative democracy. The CCs and Communes, by maintaining the pressure of constituent power on constituted power, play an important role in what, since 2007, is being called the “new geometry of power”, in reference both to the formal geography of the Venezuelan democracy and the power relations within it (Massey 2009). This concept is based on the recognition that the country’s geometries of power are highly unequal and antidemocratic and that its territorial geopolitics needs to be reorganized. With the advent of the CCs, those who previously had no say, such as rural and urban marginal communities, now have more of a voice, and the form of participation has changed from individual, representative, and passive to collective, direct, and active. In the council structures, the division into separate political, social, and economic spheres tends to be abolished. As a first step toward overcoming the separation of spheres and of powers, the inhabitants of the communities, from the lowest level to the highest, determine the reference territory and their affiliation themselves (Azzellini 2017: 98–100; 244–247). The new boundaries refer to

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the (relational) social-cultural-economic space that derives from everyday life and not to the existing political-administrative space (Harvey 2006). Nor do the Communes have to correspond to the official territorial divisions; rather, they can stretch across different municipalities or even states. Nevertheless, the boundaries of their responsibilities remain unclear, while their relations with the old institutionality are variable and constantly redefined. The CCs and Communes have far-reaching implications for the model of the state whose public welfare function is no longer the responsibility of a specialized bureaucracy but is realized through transfers of financial and technical resources to the communities. Nevertheless, local autonomy is neither isolation from state power nor a counterweight to it; rather, it is a form of networked selfadministration that overcomes the separation between political, social, and economic spheres and tendentially renders the state in its present form partly superf luous. Gender relations are changing too. As is common in processes of deep social transformation, women have been the driving force. They make up a vast majority of the activists in the CCs and Communes (Azzellini 2017). This is recognized explicitly at the El Maizal Commune, where women are organized in the Movement of Communard Women, which defines its own means and ends and brings them into the general struggle. El Maizal is a highly organized rural commune that has occupied private and state-owned farmland, green houses, and a pig farm. The majority of its activists are women, a fact that has defined the character of the Commune’s endeavors, actions, and victories (Comuna El Maizal 2019). In 2008 CCs and Communes started to establish Enterprises of Communal Social Production (later Production was replaced by Property, EPSCs). These are cooperatives founded and administered collectively by the CC or the Commune. The necessity of forming community-controlled cooperatives as an alternative to traditional worker-controlled cooperatives emerged in 2006. By then, as a result of institutional programs and incentives, more than 70,000 worker cooperatives were in operation; however, these did not permit advanced planning of a communal production cycle (production, processing, and distribution). Their work did not necessarily correspond to the interests of the communities. Often, they did not contribute to the development of a communal economy. Over the years, thousands of EPSCs have been founded. They principally operate in sectors that respond to pressing social needs, such as food, construction materials production, or transport services; textile manufacturers, agricultural companies, bakeries, and shoemakers are also common. Larger EPSCs also exist, such as the ones dedicated to the production of prefabricated houses (Azzellini 2017: 164–171; 252–258). A change can be observed in the kinds of projects undertaken by CCs and Communes. During their first years, most CCs and Communes concentrated on repairing homes, roads, and common spaces and on creating access to basic services. Then, productive projects began increasing, especially at the level of

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Communes. Institutions and state-owned enterprises began to adopt and promote communal cooperatives. The Organic Law of the Communal Economic System (LOC 2010) provided the legal framework for EPSCs (Azzellini 2017: 253–273). At times, Communes and worker collectives have jointly occupied and taken over underperforming state companies or abandoned private companies. This is the case of the former Brazilian beer brewery Brahma-AmBev in Barquisimeto, Lara state, abandoned by the owners in March 2013. Thirty of its workers occupied it and started managing it together with the “José Pío Tamayo” Commune. They started selling filtered deep well water, established a car wash, and opened a selling point for chicken supplied by another nearby workerrecuperated company, Beneagro. In 2014 they founded the EPSC Proletarios Uníos (United Proletarians). The Commune faced various eviction attempts by the oppositional authorities of the regional government. In 2016 Proletarios Uníos successfully started the production of industrial animal feed. However, not all CC and Communes function as democratic popular assemblies. Some stopped working as soon as economic support by the state vanished due to the crisis. In some cases, the councils work thanks to a few activists who rely on the support but not the active participation of the community, while in other cases councils truly operate based on community assemblies. Regarding the Communes, some continue to function thanks to well-organized activists who do the heavy lifting with the support of the communities, despite the assemblies meeting regularly, while others are highly organized and boast direct democratic decision-making structures with high levels of participation.

The communal state The socialist project of revolutionary Bolivarianism is grounded in the construction of “councilist structures” from the bottom up in different sectors of society. The intention is that these councilist structures of self-government and control of production cooperate and converge at higher levels of organization, in order to overcome the bourgeois state and gradually replace it with a communal state. The modern nation state is considered an integral product of capitalism –not a neutral instrument or an autonomous entity – and thus cannot be the central agent of transformation. The mechanisms of transformation, the structures of self-government, and the solutions to prevailing problems have to emerge from constituent power, the popular movements and the organized pueblo. The state is responsible for lending technical and economic support to the constituent power and guaranteeing the material conditions that the realization of the common good requires, in order that the constituent power can develop the new society. The term “communal state” was coined by Chávez in January 2007. In this manner, he picked up a concern originating with antisystemic forces and applied it more widely. As Chávez further specified, the future communal state must be subordinated to popular power, which would replace bourgeois civil society. This would overcome the rift between the

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economic, the social, and the political spheres – between civil society and political society – which underlies capitalism and the bourgeois state. It would also prevent over-centralization and the power shift from the people to the state that characterized the countries of “actually existing socialism” (Chávez 2008: 67). This arrangement was declared by Chávez to be the normative orientation for the transition to socialism. Although it was shared by only a few governmental sectors, it was widely adopted and promoted by rank-and-file movements that propose a protagonistic role for constituent power in redefining state and society, thus opening up a perspective on how to overcome the logic of capital. Anacaona Marin of the El Panal Commune in the barrio 23 de Enero of Caracas explains, that the revolution begins with the communards and the communes as historical subject. Considering that, they were well aware that the project of the commune, defined as the construction of socialism through “self-government and economic emancipation (…) with a people in power” (Pascual 2019), would meet fierce resistance on all levels, from sectors of the government, from the opposition, from private capital, and from inside and outside Venezuela. It is not only the question of imperialism: We are also resisting old forms of production and their diverse forms of domination: from the organization of education and affects, to the organization of the formal political sphere and the economy. (…) The communal subject is the one that affirms that capitalism is not a natural occurrence. (Pascual 2019) El Panal comprises some 13,000 people, who started organizing self-government structures years before the Commune law was promulgated. Marin belongs to the Alexis Vive Patriotic Force, a revolutionary organization with deep roots in a specific sector of the barrio.13 He explains further that the communes are envisioned as “counter-hegemonic spaces with a vocation for hegemony” (Pascual 2019). That means they build new economic relations alternative to capitalism and have decision-making and the exercise of power in the defined commune territory in the hands of their inhabitants. By this they aim to show that an alternative form of social and economic organization is possible (Pascual 2019). In the “Organic Law of Communes”, the envisioned communal state is defined as: [a] form of socio-political organization, founded in the Social State of Law and Justice established in the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in which power is exercised directly by the people, by means of communal self-governments with an economic model of social property and endogenous and sustainable development that permits the achievement

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of supreme social happiness of Venezuelans in the socialist society. The basic structural cell of the communal state is the Commune. (LOC 2010) This implies a profound transformation of constituted power and a resignification of the state. By this definition, the communal state would be more a non-state than a state. Among the popular forces that have adopted this perspective are the biggest popular movements, such as the aforementioned MDP, the Bolívar and Zamora Revolutionary Current (CRBZ),14 the movement for workers’ control, the National Network of Communards (RNC),15 the widespread alternative and community media, and many other peasant organizations, Communes, and rank-and-file activists. The RNC declared among its goals: To progressively dismantle the bourgeois liberal state and construct on the part of the pueblo a new form of government, the Socialist communal state, which resembles and recuperates the historic project truncated in 1498 with the arrival of the Spanish conquistador. To develop self-management capacity as a central element in exercising revolutionary communal selfgovernment, the government of the pueblo, in which decisions are made in a collective, democratic manner. (RNC 2011) Although the communal state was declared to be the official normative orientation and despite Chávez’ efforts, the majority of public institutions and PSUV representatives worked effectively against it, on account of their inherent logic of power. After 2010, as the rank and file pushed for a radicalization of the transformation process, conf licts between workers and communities on one side, and government institutions and party representatives on the other, were on the increase, while discontent among Chavistas deepened. Chávez was well aware of the impasse. Less than two weeks after his reelection as president of Venezuela for the fourth time and only months before his death on March 5, 2013, he delivered a very critical speech at the Cabinet meeting. It came to be known as “El Golpe de Timón” (“Strike at the Helm”, Chávez 2015) and is still the central reference for revolutionary Bolivarianism. Chávez offered a radical critique of the way in which the process of social transformation was obstructed, insisted on fundamental changes in the entire government structure, and advocated for an immediate leap forward in the creation of the communal state.

Conclusion Contrary to the widespread international perception, revolutionary Bolivarianism is not a state-centered nation-building project. It is a radical nation-based project of decolonialization16 with a council-based socialist horizon. However, since

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self-government arises in a context of representative democracy and private and state-owned economy, the process is marked from a very early stage by both cooperation and conf lict between constituent power and constituted power. While state support has played an important role – especially during the Chávez government – by helping disseminate and strengthen many processes of local self-organization, it has been, at the same time, inhibiting and limiting for them. Attempts at co-optation, the imposition of agendas and projects, and welfarebased paternalistic practices by the institutions constantly threaten autonomous popular organization. There is an inherent contradiction between representative democracy and its institutions on the one hand and the structures of selfgovernment on the other. Moreover, the power asymmetry favors the constituted power. The institutions control the finances and have privileged access to the media and other institutional actors. During his 2013 electoral campaign, president Maduro acknowledged the centrality of Communes. In 2013 increasing workers’ struggles and occupations forced him to step in and negotiate the gradual workers’ control of state-owned companies (Azzellini 2017). Communes used to mobilize by occupying inefficient institutions and state-owned companies. However, after the violent mobilizations of the opposition intensified, internal conf licts in Chavismo were not openly discussed any longer, but more often suppressed by the government and the institutions, instead of opting for a negotiated solution. With the worsening of the economic crisis that began in 2014 due to a massive oil price decrease, the international siege against Venezuela, violent attacks by the opposition, economic war by private entrepreneurs, mafias, and financial institutions, and errors by the government in economic and financial matters, the CCs and Communes have experienced decreasing financial and institutional support. They were displaced from the center of government discourse in favor of institutional and party hierarchies. The “Strike at the Helm” did not take place. On the contrary, bureaucratization has increased, and critical voices in both the party and the government have been marginalized. Despite conf licts with the government, in a context of increased efforts by the US and the Venezuelan right to push for regime change, the self-government structures express their general support for the government, in order to preserve the space and the possibility of deciding their own destiny. In the second half of 2019, revolutionary Bolivarianism started a nationwide coordination of the Communards’ Union with the Communes at its center: “The Unión Comunera wants to constitute itself as a big national political movement, a space that articulates the struggles of the Chavista people for the definitive construction of socialism,” (TatuyTV 2020) as the document calling for the first regional meeting states. The first regional meeting took place January 24–26, 2020, in the Las Lomas farm in the state of Lara, bringing together more than 300 communards from 60 communes of the states of Lara, Portuguesa, Yaracuy, Cojedes, and Apure. Four other regional meetings were supposed to follow before the foundational congress of the Communards’ Union planned for late March.

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The agenda had to be suspended because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ángel Prado, spokesperson of the Commune El Maizal and member of the Constituent Assembly of Venezuela, declared during the opening of the meeting that the goal of the Communard’s Union was not to oppose the government; rather popular power had to advance and form a huge pole and continue to occupy land and abandoned production sites. Aroldo Pérez, spokesperson of the Commune Rio Buchí, state of Portuguesa, denounced the state handing over state enterprises to private investors: “There is a mediatic discourse saying that they are with the Communes, but what we can see is the privatization of social production units Chávez created, and we see that with concern” (TatuyTV 2020). The place chosen for the first meeting, the former state-owned coffee farm Las Lomas of 186 hectare, underlined that. Four adjacent communes occupied the abandoned farm in January 2019 when it was supposed to be handed over to a big private coffee farmer. The communards cleaned the land and recuperated as many coffee plants as possible; they have been growing coffee, corn, black beans, pigeon peas, and other produce. The regional authorities reacted with harsh repression. Several communards were incarcerated for 42 days until they had to be released because of popular pressure. In September 2019 police forces tried to evict the communards from the farm but did not succeed because of the communards’ resistance. Nevertheless, council structures have endured and are the main organizational framework through which communities build mechanisms to resist the consequences of the crisis. There are many production facilities controlled by communities, and out-of-business companies are taken over by their workers and communities, establishing different kinds of production. These types of experiences are very relevant in a time of very deep crisis that strains social networks by pushing people to greater individualism. Most communities are well aware that their aspirations are only going to be fulfilled if they are autonomous in their development. They are determined to continue along the road to building self-government and are increasingly developing their skills, building networks, and prefiguring a new economy, a new politics, and a new society. A broad network of alternative popular construction remains alive.

Notes 1 Venezuelan policies under Chávez are also often characterized as “resource nationalism”. I will not discuss the term here. It refers simply to policies aiming at a national control of resources. I consider it an inaccurate and politically questionable use of the term “nationalism”: It refers usually to countries in a subordinated position in the world system. No one would use the term for countries of the global North doing the same. 2 I will use the Spanish term pueblo when I refer to “the people” as a concept in revolutionary Bolivarianism in order to mark the difference between this and other understandings of “the people”. Moreover, there are also other terms in Spanish translated into English as “the people”. 3 There is a long, ongoing debate and a huge body of literature about different nationalisms of regions in Europe and victims of homogenizing nationalism – e.g.,

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6 7 8 9 10

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Basque country, Corsica, Sardinia, Provence, Catalonia, Ireland, Scotland, and others – that were characterized as “internal colonies” since the 1960s (Hechter 1975). Theorists and scholars of those movements have contributed to an analysis and theorization of non-homogenizing nationalisms. For a long time, Fichte’s nationalist turn has been widely ignored in the international debate because of his initial support for the French Revolution. In German language analysis, Fichte’s Reden are considered foundational for a strongly ethnic German nationalism. Over the past two decades this reading of Fichte has also entered the international debate (see Abizadeh 2005). Similarly, Foucault made a link between mass conscription and compulsory education, which he considered, together with mental hospitals and prisons, the “disciplinary institutions” of the modern system of the disciplinary state (Conversi 2008: 1299, Foucault 1979). YVKE Mundial: Chávez lee nueva lista de ataques a misiones: “Aquí hay una lucha de clases”, available at: http://www.radiomundial.com.ve/yvke/noticia.php?1553 (accessed November 30, 2008). On racism in Venezuelan society and in the opposition, see (Herrera Salas 2004, López 2015). Les Misérables, referred to occasionally by Chávez, has been printed and freely distributed by the state. Yusmeli Patiño from the Commune “Eje de MACA”, Petare, Greater Caracas (Azzellini and Ressler 2011). The MDP is a network of urban movements composed of the CTU; the tenants network, which struggles against eviction and in favor of the expropriation of apartments and their delivery to those who live in them; the pioneer encampments of homeless families, who mobilize for the right to urban land and organize for the building of new collective settlements; and the janitors’ movement, formed by families who work as janitors. Like the organizations that comprise it, the MDP emerged by the initiative of and with the support of the CTU. The state social programs in the areas of health care, education, attention to vulnerable population, local infrastructure, and others, based on the self-organization of the people. See the list of Communal Councils and Communes officially registered on the website of the Ministerio del Poder Popular para las Comunas, http://consulta.mpcomunas .gob.ve (Accessed February 25, 2020). In Venezuela, local revolutionary organizations represent a hegemonic organizing force in marginalized urban and rural areas. The CRBZ is composed of the peasant organization National Peasants’ Front Ezequiel Zamora (FNCEZ); the Simón Bolívar National Communal Front (FNCSB), which brings together CC, Communes, and communal cities; the Simón Rodríguez Center for Training and Social Study (CEFES); and the Workers Popular Power Movement (MPPO) (Azzellini 2017: 71–73). Until 2017 the RNC was the most important autonomous commune network bringing together several hundred of the Communes. The decolonialization is seen by revolutionary Bolivarianism as a holistic process, decolonizing the people, history, beliefs, practices (e.g., agricultural practices), customs, and political structures and institutions.

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5 WHICH NATION IS THIS? BREXIT AND THE NOT-SO-UNITED KINGDOM John Clarke

On June 23, 2016, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. The referendum result (to leave, by 52% to 48%) came as a surprise to many, and its consequences are still working their way through Britain’s political, social, and economic formation. At the time of writing, the United Kingdom will finally exit from the European Union on December 31, 2020, whether or not a “deal” for future relationships has been finalized. The “Brexit” [British Exit] vote has been widely viewed as forming part of a turn to populist, nationalist, and rightwing politics across many global locations (from India to the USA; from Hungary to Brazil). Certainly, the Leave campaigns articulated a potent vision of how an independent and sovereign nation might be revived by “taking back control” and making Britain Great again. However, my focus here is more on what is concealed by these discussions of the nation and nationalism. In particular, I will suggest that the moment of Brexit has revealed an increasingly dis-United Kingdom, composed of several nations (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales) in which a series of divergent nationalisms are in play. It is also important to keep in mind that nations themselves are not uniform or coherent entities but are composed of different places, politics, and people (I will return to this point later). In the first part of this chapter, I explore Brexit as a moment of nationalist, authoritarian populism – an instance of what Maskovsky and Bjork-James (2019) call “angry politics”. In the second part, I focus on the complex territorial constitution of the United Kingdom and the shifting assemblage of its constituent parts, with some attention to how its governance through a largely unwritten constitution blurs different conceptions of sovereignty and political authority. Thirdly, I suggest that the dominant form of nationalism in play in the Leave vote was, in fact, English rather than British nationalism and ref lect on how this nationalism has been shaped by histories of both “external” and “internal”

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colonialism. Fourthly, I explore how tensions exacerbated by Brexit have both exposed this English nationalism to greater scrutiny and created spaces of possibility for alternative conceptions of nation(s) and alternative nationalisms. I conclude by considering how the example of the United Kingdom illuminates a conception of nations as shifting, complex, and contingent assemblages. In parallel, I suggest that there is no singular form of nationalism to be abstracted from history. Rather there are situational variants, recurrently brought into being, adapted, abandoned, or reinvented.

A nation in revolt? Brexit as the “People’s Choice” The referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union in 2016 has been explained in a variety of ways as the revolt of those “left behind” by neoliberal globalization; a politics of rage amongst those abandoned by a European cosmopolitan political elite; or the impassioned resurgence of a nation seeking to “take back control” from a European superstate. More local considerations also played a role in the referendum: a strategic miscalculation by then Prime Minister David Cameron who believed it would resolve splits and tensions in the Conservative party; a range of dubious political maneuvers and false advertising on the part of the two Leave campaigns (LeaveEU and Vote Leave), some of which are still under investigation after more than three years. Beyond the United Kingdom, the Brexit vote has been read as forming part of a wider movement of angry, authoritarian, nationalist, and populist politics stretching from Modi’s India to Bolsanaro’s Brazil (via Trump’s USA). An extensive literature has developed on right-wing populism and its nationalist or nativist character (e.g., Mudde & Kaltwasser 2017; Müller 2019). Although Brexit certainly shares many of these tendencies, any adequate account has to address the complex condensation of local, national, transnational, and global forces and relationships that animated the political moment (see Clarke 2019, for this argument for “conjunctural analysis”). Among the shared conditions are the dynamics through which neoliberal globalization (and especially its failures, fractures, and crises) has brought the “national question” back to the center of the political stage. The revitalization of nationalism in so many settings owes much to the perceived incapacity of national governments and states to preserve and protect the nation and its members in the face of global disruptions – deindustrialization, growing inequalities, and the austerity policies that bore heavily on public services and infrastructure after the 2008 crash. As recent national-populist political movements have understood, people still look to nation-states to provide support and well-being, even if these movements have constructed those desires in nationalist/nativist terms: as welfare and jobs for “our people”. It is, then, not surprising that so many current political projects – including Brexit – wrestle with this hyphenated formation of the nation-state, promising to rescue both the nation-as-people and the nation-as-state. These restorationist promises center on a strange combination of “sovereignty” and

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the “way of life” associated with the people that underpins the commitment to “make X great again”. In such a moment, however, sovereignty is reactivated as a political trope and is made the symbol of (national) liberation: power to the people, indeed (on sovereignty, see Brown 2010; and in relation to Brexit, Gordon 2016, and Tzouvala 2017). As some have argued (notably Mouffe 2019), not all populist responses to neoliberal globalization and its effects have emerged from the right. Indeed, mobilizations such as Syriza and Podemos in Europe have opened up arguments about forms of “left populism”. Within the United Kingdom’s conf licts over leaving the European Union, there was a subordinate but significant argument for what became known as “Lexit”: a Left Exit from the European Union. This argument commanded considerable support on the British political left, including sections of the Labour Party. It was founded on a long-standing critique of the European Union as a vehicle of internationalization and neoliberalization which had undermined possibilities for socialist politics and policies. At the heart of these concerns were fiscal policies such as the European Union’s competition rules, the Stability and Growth Pact (with its rules for regulating governmental spending and public debt), and the growing power of the Eurogroup. Those arguing for Lexit also pointed to the way the European Union had dealt with the Greek debt crisis (Lapavitsas 2019; but see also Varoufakis, 2017). Also at stake were questions of future economic and public policy, such as investment in cooperatives or the renationalization of public utilities (railways, water, etc.). Writing after the 2016 referendum result, Guinan and Hanna (2017) argued that a future Corbyn-led Labour government should align Brexit negotiations with plans for a “radical economic transformation and redistribution of power and wealth, claiming that [o]nly by pursuing strategies capable of re-establishing broad control over the national economy can Labour hope to manage the coming period of pain and dislocation following Brexit”. Such an approach would require both new institutional arrangements and approaches to economic policy, attentive to the “centrality of ownership and control, democracy, and participation”. If accomplished, it would enable departure from the European Union to create new political-economic possibilities and a desperately needed social transformation (see also Buxton 2017). Jeremy Corbyn’s period as leader of the Labour Party led to a more leftinclined orientation to both politics and policy, generating a vision of a more social democratic Britain and the mobilization of a younger membership of the Party committed to a pro-public, anti-austerity politics. Enlarged public spending, the renationalization of some public utilities, and a shift in taxation policies (especially around corporate taxation) alarmed the dominant, right-wing media, as did Corbyn’s history of anti-colonial solidarities and his commitment to nuclear disarmament. A relatively narrow defeat in the 2017 General Election (which denied the Conservative Party a Parliamentary majority) aroused the hopes of many. However, the subsequent disastrous defeat in the 2019 election dealt a devastating blow to those hopes. Even within the Labour Party, the

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Lexit arguments formed only one strand of an intense internal and public argument about Brexit, which resulted in the party entering the 2019 election with an agnostic policy towards Brexit. Some have claimed that Labour’s losses in the older industrial towns of the Midlands and North of England ref lected the failure to adopt a Lexit position, thereby not acknowledging the mood of anti-globalization and the desire for a renewed national sovereignty (see, for instance, Lapavitsas op cit., and Fazi & Mitchell 2017). For others, the dynamics of electoral realignment point to more complex and more long running shifts in class formation and political mobilization, to say nothing of the contradictory trajectory of the British Labour Party and the “shape shifting” character of the Conservatives (e.g., Clarke 2020a, and Spours 2020). The contradictions of British Labourism include a recurring ambivalence about the relationship between the national and the international (from a long running strand of antiimperialism to Blairite globalization, interwoven with a recurring and not always progressive nationalism). Nevertheless, these arguments over Lexit provide a further reminder that Brexit is not simply another instance of nationalist/populist politics. It is driven by other specific features of the United Kingdom – the post-crash turn to austerity in politics and policy (Forkert 2018); the enlarged competition for the right-wing terrain of English politics, embodied in the Nigel Farage-led UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party and subsequently the Brexit Party, also led by Farage); and, not least, the long running postcolonial psychodrama of a Great Britain, whose greatness was thoroughly entangled in empire and its racialized imaginaries (Gilroy 2005). This postcolonial dynamic ensures a constant confusion and conf lation of nation, race, and identity, which enabled the campaigns for Leave to recurrently address an imagined nation-in-waiting that was experiencing a “sense of loss” (Clarke 2019). This “structure of feeling” (Williams 1977) condensed multiple losses: the loss of imperial greatness; the loss of industry in the deindustrializing decades that followed Margaret Thatcher’s election in 1979; the loss of a “way of life” (deeply associated with migration); and the loss of cultural power and privilege (felt most grievously by older, white men). In this sense, what Hall has called the “fateful triangle” of race, ethnicity, and nation formed core elements of the nationalism that was at stake in Brexit (Hall 2017).

A shifting assemblage: The United Kingdom in theory and practice Like most nations, the United Kingdom is the product of political and cultural work. More particularly, it is the product of political and cultural work that seeks to erase the traces of its own activities, making the nation appear as both natural and normal, an unchanging unity of people and place. The contingently assembled nature of the nation has been made more visible by the stresses and strains surrounding Brexit, but before discussing those in more detail, it is

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worth tracing the elements that are brought together in the United Kingdom. At its root, the United Kingdom combines versions of four countries: England, (Northern) Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. As the British government explained (for the benefit of potential citizens): There is some confusion about the correct meanings and use of the terms “United Kingdom”, “British Isles”, “Britain” and “British”. The United Kingdom consists today of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (the rest of Ireland is an independent country). These four countries came together at different times to form a union called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which is the official name of the country. The name “Britain” or “Great Britain” only refers to England, Scotland and Wales, not to Northern Ireland. The adjective “British”, however, usually refers to everyone in the UK, including Northern Ireland. There are also several islands which are closely linked to the United Kingdom but do not form part of it: the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. These have kept their own institutions of government and are called “Crown Territories”. (Home Office 2007: 1) Taken alone, the history of England is complex, formed through successive invasions (including Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and Normans). England acquired a settled shape under the feudal rule of the “Norman Yoke” (Hill 1958). The processes of invasion and settlement drove many existing populations to the territorial margins of Wales and Scotland, helping to form what became known as the “Celtic fringe”. England developed an elaborated state bureaucracy in the Tudor period (Corrigan & Sayer 1985) and recurrently went about territorial expansion overseas (from France to new colonies). Meanwhile, Wales was annexed by force during Edward I’s campaign (1272–1283) and was encircled by a network of English castles. Following Edward II’s suppression of Owain Glyndwr/Owen Glendower’s revolt in the 15th century, Wales became formally incorporated in England through the Laws in Wales Acts of 1535 and 1542. Scotland was bound to England first through the vagaries of monarchical succession (after the exhaustion of the Tudors) and then more formally in the Act of Union of 1701. Ireland was similarly joined to the union in 1801 after a long period of military interventions, rebellions and their suppression, and patterns of settlement by Anglo-Scottish landowners and tenants. After the struggle for Home Rule in the early 20th century, Ireland was “partitioned” in 1921–1922 between the South, which became the Republic of Ireland, and the North, sometimes known as the Six Counties, which remained attached to the United Kingdom (“Great Britain and Northern Ireland”). All of this produces a contingently “United” Kingdom and a more uneven and conf licted sense of Britishness than the picture painted by the Home Office above (see also Ware 2007).

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The political-cultural trajectory of this assemblage has been subjected to recurrent strains and tensions: the Irish rebellion of the early 20th century left behind fractures in the North (between Irish Nationalist-inclined Catholics and Unionist Protestants, attached to the Union with Britain) that eventually crystallized in “the Troubles”, the increasingly bitter and violent conf licts that emerged in the 1960s. These conf licts were only resolved (provisionally) in the Peace Process, brokered by the United Kingdom and Irish governments (supported by the European Union and USA), which created a devolved “power-sharing” Northern Ireland Assembly under the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. The process also significantly softened the “hard (i.e., militarized) border” between the Republic and the North. Although Northern Ireland dominated political and governmental attention at the end of the 20th century, the other constituent parts of the United Kingdom were also sites of strain. Varieties of nationalist politics developed in both Wales and Scotland from the late 1960s (Nairn 1977). In Wales, they ranged from cultural revival (centered on language and cultural practices) to limited violence (e.g., attacks on some English-owned “second homes” in Wales), while in Scotland a cultural politics went alongside a drive for political independence led by the Scottish National Party (SNP). Referendums about governmental devolution were held in 1997 in both Scotland and Wales, resulting in new national assemblies in Edinburgh and Cardiff (with limited devolved powers) alongside the continuance of Westminster government. Mullen has argued that the United Kingdom is best understood as a “state of unions” or “union state” rather than a “unitary state” (2019). However, he suggests that this shift in academic terminology is not ref lected in the realm of governmental politics with the persistence of a “Westminster” centered view of a unitary state that rules and administers the United Kingdom above, rather than alongside, the devolved administrations. In contrast, the nationalist-inf lected parties in Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland have stressed a more contingent view of the union, emphasizing the importance of the democratic consent of the governed and, by implication, the potential for such consent to be withdrawn in the future. However, Mullen claims that the unitary view has continued to hold sway in England, where “the tendency has been to elide the distinction between the concepts of England, Britain and the United Kingdom and to fail to grasp that the nature of the United Kingdom is viewed differently by many in the three smaller nations” (2019: 278). Governance through a largely unwritten constitution contributes to this capacity to blur different conceptions of sovereignty and devolution. But Mullen’s observation about the other blurring – between England, Britain, and the United Kingdom – points to the central role played by England and Englishness in the formation of Britain and Britishness.

An English hegemony? The problematic Britishness of Brexit England is the largest (in terms of territory and population) of the four elements of the United Kingdom assemblage and it acts as the core of the United Kingdom,

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pulling the elements together under Westminster/London/English domination. This dominance has been described by some scholars as the organizing principle of a process of “internal colonialism” (Hechter 1975) in which the “Celtic nations” – Ireland, Scotland, and Wales – were subjected to forms of English rule. Although the concept – and its application to an imperial metropole – is much debated, it offers a distinctive insight into the strained internal relations that have been integral to the making and maintenance of the United Kingdom. It also makes visible the double dynamic of internal and external colonialism that forged “Great Britain” as a global power (see also Turner 2018, on the dynamics of internalized colonization). Certainly, a sense of their political, economic, and cultural subordination to England-Englishness-Westminster has been a recurrent theme in the variety of nationalisms that have, at different times, interrupted the narrative of a happily United Kingdom. Equally, echoes of the processes and experiences of subordination have a long life in political-cultural memory, from the Irish famine to the Highland clearances in Scotland, while land/property ownership has been a recurrent feature of disputes over English rule (whether the feudal estates of Scotland or English second homes in Wales). However, among the different nationalisms that continue to circulate in the United Kingdom, the least discussed version has been English nationalism. The reason is not hard to see, since the other variants (Irish, Scottish, and Welsh) have been more visible as insurgent nationalisms, emerging from felt subordination to English hegemony. England – and Englishness – has tended to form the taken-for-granted center of Britain/the United Kingdom/Britishness. Despite a long history, English nationalism has become more visible and more audible as a political-cultural formation around the strained relations with the European Union (see, inter alia, Kenny 2014; Kumar 2003; and Brown’s review essay, 2017). Kenny, for example, argues that the rise of English nationalism is associated with the combined effects of globalization and deindustrialization, which are effectively coterminous with the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union. He draws on Wellings’ (2012) argument that, in this period, English nationalism came to be dominated by a reactionary movement against the European Union and the prospect of further European integration, embodied in a range of political mobilizations from UKIP to the English Defence League (EDL). This dynamic comes to fruition in the moment of Brexit, but it is important to note that, for Kenny, this variant of English nationalism has existed alongside two other strands. One emerges from a long-established rural imaginary – a bucolic England characterized by a calm cultural (as well as political) conservatism and a style of pragmatic social and political adaptation (see, for example, Williams 1973). This imaginary has often been articulated in the self-image of the Conservative Party, perhaps most famously in former Conservative Prime Minister John Major’s (1993) claim (with its characteristic elision of England and Britain) that “Fifty years on from now, Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and, as George Orwell said, ‘Old maids

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bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist’ and, if we get our way, Shakespeare will still be read even in school”. The significance of this rural imaginary has been extensively debated, especially among historians (e.g., Wiener 1981, and the critique by Mandler 1997). Kenny also points to another, and significantly different, strand to contemporary English nationalism: a political and cultural liberalism that forms “the third broad pattern of national sentiment which has become embedded within contemporary English culture” (2014: 125). This three-part view of English nationalism is intriguingly reminiscent of Raymond Williams’ (1977) important distinction between dominant, residual, and emergent parts of a cultural formation, with the current reactionary mobilization forming the dominant strand, the “bucolic” being a residual formation, and the liberal thread (especially in cultural politics and aesthetic practices) marking an emergent strand. This terrain has provided a recurring question for the left in Britain: to what extent is it possible to imagine a non-reactionary Englishness as part of the struggle for progressive values? These explorations have taken place in culture, e.g., in the singer Billy Bragg’s constant search to articulate a new England or in Jeremy Dellar’s reworkings of English political and cultural moments from Peterloo to rave culture, and in political writing and journalism, from Tom Nairn’s exploration of the Break-Up of Britain (1977) to the journalist John Harris’s attempts to find ways of talking about Englishness differently (2019). Meanwhile, Simon Featherstone’s work (2008) traces the shifting – and contested – versions Englishness in play in popular culture across the transition from Imperial power to a postcolonial nation. He explores the emptiness of Englishness as a nationalism and nationalist political project but holds out hope that, in the crossed threads of English stories, there may be a possibility of crafting a new – and more open – Englishness. This might be accomplished by engaging with the other, less visible, ways in which “England” is given meaning beyond the usual formations of English nationalism and engagements with the most difficult and most productive consequences of its imperial history and expressions of its regional tradition and modernity. It is in those networks of difference and diversity that England and its Englishness can best be understood and developed. (2008: 182) The longer history of anti-racism, the rise of what Gilroy (2005) calls a postcolonial culture of conviviality, and the emergence of forms of “everyday multiculture” (e.g., Neal et al. 2018; Wilson 2011) underpin this sense of possibility, but it is always traversed by arguments about whether these form the ground of a progressive Englishness or Britishness. In the context of this chapter, however, it remains important to focus on the first – and dominant – strand of Englishness since it is the one most visibly in play in the decision to leave the European Union (and the one that has continued to occupy center stage since the 2016 Referendum). This reactionary Englishness mobilizes a

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complex of sentiments, including loss, rage, shame, and anxiety (see, inter alia, Aughey 2010; Clarke 2019; Closs Stephens 2019). Aughey’s tracing of varieties of English “anxiety” underlines what we might call the affective charge of English nationalism, a charge that adds to its potential as a force for political mobilization. In recent years, it has been a dynamic that has developed in the space between the Conservative Party (with a long history of Euroscepticism) and its outliers such as UKIP and the EDL (and their predecessors such as the National Front and British National Party). The 2016 referendum on membership in the European Union provided a crystallizing focus for these concerns across a range of social groups. Much attention has been focused on the “post-industrial” working class in towns across northern England, the Midlands, and South Wales. Such groups, sometimes (inappropriately) categorized as the “white working class”, had been significant in the earlier electoral successes of UKIP in national and European elections. This working class anti-elitism and anti-Europeanism has also been seen as the political revenge of those people and places described as the “left behind” (see Ford & Goodwin 2014 and the discussion of such spatial imaginaries in Sykes 2018). There are, as I have argued elsewhere (e.g., Clarke 2020a), many problems with this view of the working class, not least the racialized distinction between the white working class and black and Asian groups not recognized as part of the working class but residualized as “communities”. There are more specific problems in relation to the Brexit vote, where, as Dorling (2016) has argued, the middle classes made a more substantial contribution to the Leave vote than the working class. He has argued that the outcome owed more to “Comfortable Britain” than “Left Behind Britain”, noting that 52% of people who voted to Leave lived in the southern half of England and “59% of Leave voters were middle class, while the proportion of Leave voters who came from the lowest two social classes was just 24%”. The “traditional” middle classes (centered in the suburbs and shires) were a critical element in the articulation of a nostalgic and racialized nationalism and the dream of recovering a lost “way of life”. It is worth returning to the “affective charge” of English nationalism in the moment of Brexit. In an exploration of “Brexit and the politics of pain”, Fintan O’Toole has discussed what he sees as a sense of victimhood and self-pity – projecting a once-proud nation humiliated, dominated, and oppressed by the European “superpower”: Self-pity … combines two things that may seem incompatible: a deep sense of grievance and a high sense of superiority. It is this doubleness that makes it so important to the understanding of Brexit, a political phenomenon that is driven by ideas that would not otherwise combine. Crudely, passionate nationalism has taken two antagonistic forms. There is an imperial nationalism and an anti-imperial nationalism, one sets out to dominate the world, the other to throw off such dominance. The incoherence of the new English nationalism that lies behind Brexit is that it wants to be both

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simultaneously. On the one hand Brexit is fueled by fantasies of “Empire 2.0”, a reconstructed global mercantilist trading empire on which the old white colonies will be reconnected to the mother country. On the other, it is an insurgency and therefore needs to imagine that it is a revolt against intolerable oppression. It therefore requires both a sense of superiority and a sense of grievance. Self-pity is the only emotion that can bring them together. (2018: 2–3) This understanding of contradictory character of contemporary English nationalism suggests how a variety of sentiments could be mobilized by the Leave campaigns – anxiety, anger, loss, and a sense of political abandonment by both the Westminster’s and Brussels’ political elites and their associated cosmopolitanism (see, inter alia, Koch 2017). O’Toole also points to the conception of Britain as the driving force of a new era of global Free Trade after its departure from the European Union. This captures a further crucial element of English/British mythology: an understanding of Empire as essentially mercantilist and fundamentally benign (Wemyss 2009). It provides an underpinning for contemporary English nationalism as an articulation of two types of postcolonial anxiety and nostalgia. The first concerns the loss of Empire (the condition of Great Britain’s “Greatness”); the second concerns the loss of English hegemony over the United Kingdom (and its conf lation of English and British). The longer – but still unresolved – postcolonial trajectory indexes “external” colonialism; the more recent processes of devolution to the other nations index the beginnings of a breakup of “internal” colonialism. Multiple resentments are condensed together in this dominant strand of English nationalism that has been taking shape since the 1950s. For example, Enoch Powell, former Conservative and DUP politician, “had a lasting impact on the emergence of contemporary English nationalism through his deployment of race and xenophobia … Powell sought to articulate a new vision of England based on race and eventually resistance to European integration” (Wellings 2012: 103). Similarly, Virdee and McGeever have argued that the revival of English nationalism is fueled by a “deep-rooted nostalgia for the British Imperial project” (2017: 1809). In short, then, this contemporary version of English nationalism draws on multiple sources, identifies multiple dangers, and operates through multiple political, cultural, and affective registers. The referendum proved a fertile setting for the mobilization of this English nationalism and its defense of a lost “way of life”. In keeping with many other such movements, the Leave campaigns conf lated conceptions of nation as place, as people, and as polity, such that the promise of “taking back control” signified overlapping (and blurred) images of what might be restored by leaving the European Union. As Wellings presciently argued, nationalism – and English nationalism in particular – works through “the legitimization of a particular location of sovereignty, be that sovereignty vested in the people or the state or both” (2012: 37). Indeed, the question of the actual location of the sovereignty to be recovered emerged as a political problem after the Brexit vote had been

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won: was the sovereignty to be restored located in Parliament, the government, or the “Will of the People”? (See, inter alia, Clarke 2020b; Gordon 2016.) As I will show in the next section, the conf lation of people, place, and polity in the nationalism of the Brexit moment was to have significant consequences.

Dis-uniting the Kingdom: Brexit, nations, and nationalisms The vote to leave the European Union had a significant spatial distribution: England and Wales had majorities for Leave, while Scotland and Northern Ireland had proportionally larger majorities for Remain (see Table 5.1). The results both ref lected existing differences and had the effect of dramatizing those differences as the basis of future political action. The results have also had implications for the future constitutional arrangements of the United Kingdom. Beginning from the referendum itself, Marsden has made the argument that: In broad terms, the areas which saw the highest proportions of Remain votes cast are also the places in which support for parties advocating secession from the UK is strongest. Brexiteers couched the EU vote as a choice between a glorious British past and an ignominious European future. This polarised opinion in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, where nationalist parties offer a third alternative. The character of the nationalisms that such parties promote is therefore of central importance as the UK leaves the EU. And that character is informed by popular understandings of the past. (2018) Marsden goes on to argue that there are, however, significant differences between the nationalisms in play in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Nationalist politics in Scotland, and to a lesser extent in Northern Ireland, have articulated versions of “civic” nationalism, with a strong European orientation. Both the Scottish National Party and Sinn Fein campaigned strongly for Remain in the

TABLE 5.1 2016 Referendum results by country

Country

Electorate

Turnout %

Remain %

Leave %

England (and Gibraltar)* Northern Ireland Scotland Wales ALL

39,005,781 1,260,955 3,987,112 2,270,272 46,500,001

73.0 62.7 67.2 71.7 72.2

46.62 55.78 62.00 47.47 48.11

53.38 44.22 38.00 52.53 51.89

*Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory, ceded by Spain in a treaty in 1713. Source: The Electoral Commission: Results and turnout at the EU referendum. https://www.electora lcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/elections-and-referendums/past-elections -and-referendums/eu-referendum/results-and-turnout-eu-referendum

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2016 Referendum and have maintained an oppositional stance to the enactment of Brexit since then. By contrast, he suggests that Welsh nationalism, as embodied in Plaid Cymru, has been more narrowly rooted in the politics of culture and language and has strongest roots in north Wales. In consequence, “[i]t is therefore difficult for Welsh nationalism to speak to those on the breadline in the economically deprived areas of south Wales. And it was those regions, with their poverty and low levels of education, which voted most strongly to leave” (2018). This differentiation within Wales is significant and Mackay notes that: In all of the south Wales former coal mining valleys, the majority voted Leave. This is an area which shares many of the characteristics of the deindustrialized parts of England that voted Leave. Only five Welsh local authority areas (of 22) voted Remain. These were a combination of more cosmopolitan and aff luent places (Cardiff, Monmouthshire and the Vale of Glamorgan) and the rural Welsh heartland, y Fro Gymraeg, where Welsh nationalism and the Welsh language are strong (Ceredigion and Gwynedd). The latter is the electoral base of Plaid Cymru, the staunchly pro-European nationalist party, which received 20 per cent of the vote in Wales in the 2016 Assembly election; they are areas that voted strongly for devolution in 1997. (2020: 177) Since the Brexit vote, these lines of division in the United Kingdom have deepened. In Scotland, the SNP has pursued a consistent anti-Brexit/pro-European Union politics and has campaigned for a new referendum on Scottish independence (the last one, in 2014 voted against independence by 55.3% to 44.7%). Independence is now additionally promoted as a means of Scotland remaining in, or rejoining, the European Union. At the time of writing, the current UK government, led by Boris Johnson, is refusing to enable a new referendum, thereby reinforcing Scottish perceptions of English domination. In Northern Ireland, tensions have been deepened by the issue of the Irish border. The United Kingdom now shares only one land border with the European Union: the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. As a result of the Peace Process, that border was softened and, in the current language of trade and travel, was made “frictionless”. Before the Brexit vote, this arrangement was unproblematic as both sides of the border were part of the European Union. Now, they are different political and economic entities – and the border emerged as one of the major stumbling blocks in negotiations about the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union (see, for example, Birrell & Carmichael 2020; Gilmore 2017). Various solutions have been proposed since the referendum, ranging from the suggestion that the Republic of Ireland might be invited to “house” the United Kingdom’s border with the European Union to claims that “high tech” installations could be created that would make the border present but invisible. The Conservative governments of

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May and Johnson appeared unexpectedly blind to the difficulties and political sensitivities that the border represented – unexpectedly, given that the party’s full title is the Conservative and Unionist Party (my emphasis). The soft Irish border was defended by parties of the North, the government of the Republic, and the European Union (as cosignatories to the Belfast Agreement). In the end, and despite a UK government promise to maintain the unity of the United Kingdom, the current arrangements are for an economic border to be established between the European Union and the United Kingdom in the Irish Sea, leaving Northern Ireland with a soft border to the Republic but a distinction between it and the rest of the United Kingdom. One effect of this has been to make a united Ireland a legitimate topic of debate in the North for the first time since Partition (this is not the same as making it a likely outcome). In the process, some of the older Unionist imaginaries have been unsettled by the political and governmental struggles over Brexit (and by the long stalling of the “power sharing” government in Stormont). In the December 2019 general election, Northern Ireland returned, for the first time, a majority of “Nationalist” inclined Members of Parliament, rather than Unionist. In the February 2020 election in the Republic, Sinn Féin took the largest share of the votes, disrupting the established duopoly of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Significantly, Sinn Féin campaigned on domestic social and economic issues but has subsequently promised to call for a vote on Irish unification in the near future. In important ways, then, Brexit both embodied and has driven significant fractures in the contingent assemblage that is the United Kingdom. However, although most of the emphasis (here and more generally) has been on the fissures between the constituent nations, Cochrane has argued against taking a view that leaves England being treated as an unproblematically coherent entity: This is not a straightforward story of the break-up of Britain, both because the divisions do not neatly play across the territorial constitution of the UK, and because the national identities in play are more complex and ambiguous than any such conclusion would require. In one sense, the UK is more divided than the breakup story might suggest – “England” is by no means a unified territory or nation, and the tensions that cut across any attempt to define its national identity are deep. (2020: 172) Cochrane points to the distinctive ways in which the United Kingdom is both highly divided and highly centralized “with London (or the wider London city region) at its core” (2020: 165). London’s status as a global city (Massey 2007) as well as a national capital has produced profound concentrations of political, economic, and cultural power in the South East and is integrally linked to the decades of deindustrialization and social dislocation experienced elsewhere in England and the wider United Kingdom. The dynamics of uneven development have not only disrupted the formation of the United Kingdom but have also

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helped to generate different – and differently located – versions of English nationalism, from a culturally cosmopolitan version dominant in London and other cities, to varieties based on postimperialist nostalgia and postindustrial nostalgia, which evoke different, if overlapping, images of the lost Greatness of Britain, even as they draw on longer histories of regional and local difference and uniqueness.

Conclusion: Of nations and nationalisms In short, Brexit brings different nations and different nationalisms into view. Its animating nationalism (English-British) has proven problematic for the United Kingdom and the European Union in a number of ways. In particular, Brexit has dramatically reopened the “national question”, bringing into play differently imagined and embodied nations beyond the nominally “United” Kingdom. In more abstract terms, Brexit can be seen as taking place within a wider conjuncture where a variety of trends, dominated by neoliberal globalization, have made the national question both more visible and more urgent. The United Kingdom is not unique: many of the tendencies are shared with other places and many of the lived experiences of dislocation are common. At the same time, however, the specific forms of political articulation have taken distinctive national shapes and have produced distinct and divisive nationalisms. That is to say, far from the nation being the natural location for these experiences, or nationalism being the normal political response, the nation is given specific salience and significance conjuncturally by the ways in which the contradictions, forces, and dynamics have been condensed in and around the nation and nation-state. As a result, it becomes important to approach nations as complex and contingent assemblages and nationalisms as conjuncturally particular formations, rather than a generic political disposition. Although the United Kingdom provides a dramatic contemporary example, there is no reason to think that the conception of a nation as a shifting, complex, and contingent assemblage is unique to this case. On the contrary, nations are best conceptualized as assembled, and, as a consequence, need to be seen as potentially vulnerable to processes of disassembling or reassembling. They are typically represented, or performed, as a coherent, integrated, and persistent (if not eternal) whole. Their imagined unity of people, place, and polity serves as a recurrent point of reference and acts as a basis for domestic and international claims-making. What marks the example of the United Kingdom is the persistent visibility of the constituent nations within the whole and the shifting alignments between them. But elsewhere, other nations, people, regions, spaces, or cultures provide the sites of potential tensions for the unity projected by nationbuilding (or nation-maintaining) projects. In this sense, nations are always in a state of becoming – not just imagined communities (in Anderson’s sense [1983]) but projections of imagined unities that attempt to bind past, present, and future together in the narrative of the nation. Such projections are always at risk of

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meeting counter-projections of other imagined communities that may, or may not, be nations-in-waiting. In turn, then, it is hardly surprising that there is no singular form of nationalism to be abstracted from history. Rather there are situational variants, brought into being, adapted, abandoned, or reinvented. In the case of the United Kingdom, it is clear that the present moment sees different nationalisms in play. Scotland, and the case for Scottish independence, is dominated by a Europhile civic nationalism that reads Scottish history for its progressive and Europeanoriented features. It stresses its contemporary “Scandinavian” tendencies and affinities, especially in relation to a “new Enlightenment” in social policies and public services (Mooney & Scott 2016). Similarly in education policy, much has been made of the difference in policy and practice from England, a difference that is captured and celebrated in the idea of the “Caledonian way” (Grek 2015). In a different register, Sinn Féin has modernized its version of Irish nationalism, detaching and distancing itself from the “armed struggle” in the North and developing a conception of the parliamentary road to power – in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. They have been able to build on a well-established sense of Ireland as a European nation (both as a member of the European Union and in longer historical terms). As Marsden notes, since the Good Friday Agreement, “the party moved towards a civic understanding of Irishness which, whilst still making strident appeals to history, rejects ethnic or sectarian definitions of the nation. The fact that the party campaigned to remain in the European Union, after a long tradition of Euroscepticism, is testament to that shift” (2018). In the most recent Irish elections, the party campaigned vigorously on national social and economic issues – another aspect of civic nationalism – to successful effect. Marsden argues that there is a significant difference between these Europhile civic versions of nationalism and the forms it has taken in Wales: There is no comparable tradition of locating Welsh history within a European context. Popular views of the Welsh past are dominated by notions of Celtic heritage and struggle against England. Plaid Cymru have tried to address this by following their Scottish and Irish brethren in shedding the trimmings of ethnic nationalism. Ultimately, however, they are seen by many as a cultural pressure group advocating a version of Welshness that does not represent the majority. The centrality of the Welsh language to Plaid’s message is partly to blame for this. On one level, it is a reminder of the historical distinctiveness of the Welsh people. But less than 20% of the population speak it, making it a symbol of division rather than a unifying principle of Welshness. (2018) Overcoming such constraints is clearly not impossible, as Sinn Féin’s trajectory indicates. However, Welsh nationalism is also dogged by a more fractured history of subordination to the English hegemony – and the absence of any

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model historic kingdom to serve as a foundational guarantee of an imagined nationhood: in Gwyn Williams’ telling phrase: “When was Wales?” (1985). Finally, there is the puzzle of English nationalism – or perhaps, English nationalisms. Certainly, there is a rich variety of forms, from Arcadian celebrations of English pastoral to Powellite bundlings of racial purity and national sovereignty or the promise of a postcolonial conviviality. Variants can sometimes coalesce, as in the postimperial and postindustrial sense of loss that became articulated together around the Brexit revitalization of Powell’s conception of English sovereignty. At other times, they may be in tension, as they may also be in relation to other nationalisms within the United Kingdom. This multiplicity poses a triple problem for the development and mobilization of progressive forms of nationalism: first, is the object to build an English or a British nationalism? Second, how can either version come to terms with Britain/England’s colonial history and its continuing consequences? Third, how can such projects build on the traces of older internationalisms (and anti-imperialisms) to construct a revived and revitalized internationalist nationalism (see Gopal 2019)? Such possibilities – or imaginaries – certainly exist, both as historical legacies and as current dispositions, but they face immense challenges from what have been the dominant versions of English/British nationalism bound up in histories of domination and exceptionalism. There are always likely to be multiple nationalisms in play in any particular historical moment and this moment has seen an unusually rich proliferation of them. They form the setting – the terrain – for a variety of contentious politics. * I am grateful to the editors, Janet Newman, and Paul Stubbs for their comments on earlier drafts. I doubt I have done them justice.

References Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Community: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Aughey, A. (2010) “Anxiety and injustice: The anatomy of contemporary English nationalism” Nations and Nationalism, 16(3): 506–524. Birrell, D. and Carmichael, P. (2020) “Brexit, devolution and Northern Ireland’s political parties: Differential solutions, special status or special arrangements?” In: Guderjan, M., Mackay, H. and Steadman, G. (eds.), Contested Britain: Brexit, Austerity, Agency. Bristol: Policy Press, 203–218. Brown, H. (2017) “Post-Brexit Britain: Thinking about ‘English Nationalism’ as a factor in the EU referendum” International Politics Reviews, 5(1): 1–12. Brown, W. (2010) Walled States, Waning Sovereignty. New York: Zone Books. Buxton, X. (2017) “Lexit: Looking forwards, not backwards” Open Democracy, 21 September. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/lexit-looking-forwards-not-backw ards/. Clarke, J. (2019) “A Sense of Loss? Unsettled attachments in the current conjuncture” New Formations, 96–97(96): 132–146. Clarke, J. (2020a) “Building a ‘Boris’ bloc: Angry politics in turbulent times” Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture, 74: 118–135.

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Clarke, J. (2020b) “A sovereign people? Political fantasy and governmental time in the pursuit of Brexit” In: Guderjan, M., Mackay, H. and Steadman, G. (eds.), Contested Britain: Brexit, Austerity, Agency. Bristol: Policy Press, 117–130. Closs Stephens, A. (2019) “Feeling ‘Brexit’: Nationalism and the affective politics of movement” GeoHumanities, 5(2): 405–423. Cochrane, A. (2020) “From Brexit to … the break-up of England?” In: Guderjan, M., Mackay, H. and Steadman, G. (eds.), Contested Britain: Brexit, Austerity, Agency. Bristol: Policy Press, 161–174. Corrigan, P. and Sayer, D. (1985) The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution. London: Wiley-Blackwell. Dorling, D. (2016) “Brexit: The decision of a divided country” BMJ, 354: i3697. www.dannydorling.org/wpcontent/files/dannydorling_publication_id5564.pdf. doi: 10.1136/bmj.i3697. Fazi, T. and Mitchell, B. (2017) Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World. London: Pluto Press. Featherstone, S. (2008) Englishness: Twentieth-Century Popular Culture and the Forming of English Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Ford, R. and Goodwin, M.J. (2014) “Understanding UKIP: Identity, social change and the left behind” Political Quarterly, 85(3): 277–284. Forkert, K. (2017) Austerity as Public Mood: Social Anxieties and Social Struggles. Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Gilmore, A. (2017) “Hard borders of the mind: Brexit, Northern Ireland and the Good Friday agreement” European Council on Foreign Relations, 13 April. http:// www.ecfr .eu/ article/ commentary_ hard_borders_ of_ the_ mind_ brexit_ northern_ ireland_ and_ the_ 7273. Gilroy, P. (2005) Postcolonial Melancholia. New York: Columbia University Press. Gopal, P. (2019) Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent. London: Verso. Gordon, M. (2016) “The UK’s sovereignty situation: Brexit, bewilderment and beyond ……” King’s Law Journal, 27(3): 333–343. Grek, S. (2015) “Travelling “the Caledonian way”: Education policy learning and the making of Europe” Evidence and Policy, 11(2): 209–224. Guinan, J. and Hanna, T. (2017) “Lexit: The EU is a neoliberal project, so let’s do something different when we leave it” New Statesman. https://www.newstatesman. com/politics/brexit/2017/07/lexit-eu-neoliberal-project-so-lets-do-something-dif ferent-when-we-leave-it. Hall, S. (2017) The Fateful Triangle: Race, Ethnicity, Nation. (Edited by K. Mercer) Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harris, J. (2019) “England can be better than the Brexit caricature. We have to make the case for it” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/ jan/28/england-brexit-caricature-modern-diverse. Hechter, M. (1975) Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536–1966. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hill, C. (1958) Puritanism and Revolution: Studies in Interpretation of the English Revolution of the 17th Century. London: Martin Secker and Warburg (1997 edition, St. Martin’s Press). Home Office (2007) Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship (2nd ed.). London: The Stationery Office. Kenny, M. (2014) The Politics of English Nationhood. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Koch, I. (2017) “What’s in a vote? Brexit beyond culture wars” American Ethnologist. http: //onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/amet.12472/full.

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Kumar, K. (2003) The Making of English National Identity. New York, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lapavitsas, C. (2019) The Left Case Against the EU. Cambridge: Polity Press. Mackay, H. (2020) “Understanding Brexit in Wales: Austerity, elites and national identity” In: Guderjan, M., Mackay, H. and Steadman, G. (eds.), Contested Britain: Brexit, Austerity, Agency. Bristol: Policy Press, 175–187. Major, J. (1993) Speech to the Conservative Group for Europe, 22 April. http://www.john majorarchive.org.uk/1990-1997/mr-majors-speech-to-conservative-group-for-eu rope-22-april-1993/. Mandler, P. (1997) “Against ‘Englishness’: English culture and the limits to rural nostalgia, 1850–1940” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 7: 155–175. Marsden, R. (2018) “Brexit and the mythologies of nationalism: A warning for Wales” History and Policy: Opinion Articles, 25 June. http://www.historyandpolicy.org/opi nion-articles/articles/brexit-and-the-mythologies-of-nationalism-a-warning-for-w ales. Maskovsky, J. and Bjork-James, S. (eds.) (2019) Beyond Populism; Angry Politics and the Twilight of Neoliberalism. Morgantown, WV: University of West Virginia Press. Massey, D. (2007) World City. Cambridge: Polity. Mooney, G. and Scott, G. (2016) “Welfare, equality and social justice: Scottish independence and the dominant imaginings of the ‘New’ Scotland” Ethics and Social Welfare, 10(3): 239–251. Mouffe, C. (2019) For a Left Populism. London: Verso. Mudde, C. and Kaltwasser, C. (2017) Populism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mullen, T. (2019) “Brexit and the territorial governance of the United Kingdom” Contemporary Social Science, 14(2): 276–293. Müller, J.-W. (2019) “Populism and the people” London Review of Books, 41(10): 35–37. Nairn, T. (1977) The Break-Up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism. London: Verso. Neal, S., Bennett, K., Cochrane, A. and Mohan, G. (2018) The Lived Experiences of Multiculture: The New Spatial and Social Relations of Diversity. London: Routledge. O’Toole, F. (2018) Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain. London: Head of Zeus. Spours, K. (2020) Shapeshifters: The Evolving Politics of Modern Conservatism. https://ww w.compassonline.org.uk/publications/shapeshifting-the-evolving-politics-of-moder n-conservatism/. Sykes, O. (2018) “Post-geography worlds, new dominions, left behind regions, and ‘other’ places: Unpacking some spatial imaginaries of the UK’s ‘Brexit’ debate” Space and Polity, 22(2): 137–161. Turner, J. (2018) “Internal colonisation: The intimate circulations of empire, race and liberal government” European Journal of International Relations, 24(4): 765–790. Tzouvala, N. (2017) “Chronicle of a death foretold? Thinking About sovereignty, expertise and neoliberalism in the light of Brexit” German Law Review, 17(Brexit Special Supplement): 117–124. Varoufakis, Y. (2017) And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe, Austerity and the Threat to Global Stability. New York: Vintage. Virdee, S. and McGeever, B. (2017) “Racism, crisis, Brexit” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 41(10): 1802–1819. Ware, V. (2007) Who Cares about Britishness? A Global View of the National Identity Debate. London: Arcadia. Weiner, M. (1981) English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850–1950. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Wellings, B. (2012) English Nationalism and Euroscepticism: Losing the Peace. Oxford: Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften. Wemyss, G. (2009) The Invisible Empire: White Discourse, Tolerance and Belonging. London: Ashgate. Williams, G. (1985) When Was Wales? A History of the Welsh. London: Penguin. Williams, R. (1973) The Country and the City. London: Chatto and Windus. Williams, R. (1977) Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilson, H. (2011) “Passing propinquities in the multicultural city: The everyday encounters of bus passengering” Environment and Planning. Part A, 43(3): 634–649.

6 NAROD AS A RADICAL POLITICAL INVENTION The outset of intellectual struggles over the nation in nineteenth-century Russia Gözde Yazıcı Cörüt

Introduction This paper aims to shed some light on the conceptual and historical background of the polarizations in imperial Russia throughout the nineteenth century with a strong focus on how narod, “the people”, was understood by the Russian intelligentsia. The political and economic consequences of the uneven encounter of imperial Russia with bourgeois Europe, the accelerating disintegration of the traditional societal structures and norms parallel with the rise of capitalism in Russia, and the emergence of new status groups and social classes partly in response to and partly thanks to Russian modernization already laid out a fertile ground for a radical public with f lourishing revolutionary organizations, clubs, societies, ideologies, and journals. The specific contribution of this article is the revelation of the continuities and discontinuities in the evolution of narod as the symbolic center of the main ideological intellectual formations of the period, that is, Slavophilism and Westernizers, in order to better appreciate the radical potential of the synthesis achieved in the socialist populism of Alexander Herzen. Herzen’s position is crucial as his reinvention of narod and his reimagining of the Russian nation on an anti-capitalist and libertarian basis involves lessons not only for Russian historians but also for scholars interested in a comparative analysis of revolutionary forms of national imaginations. After a succinct explanation of the historical background of the term narod, this chapter focuses on the appearance of this concept in the discourse of official nationality, which was a pragmatic combination of Russia’s religious (Orthodoxy), political (autocracy), and national (dynasty) character. Recalling Laura Engelstein’s statement that “[t]he autocracy needed a unifying myth, not to build the consciousness of a nation but to counter the national urge” (2009: 1), this chapter looks at how narod, “the people”, was approached by Russian intellectuals,

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as a newly emerging group in the nineteenth century, in their endeavor to construct an oppositional national consciousness. Elaborating on the noble origins of the intellectuals, it will be argued that there was a causality between the social transformation of nobility and its increasingly critical stance towards the state and official nationalism. Following a brief discussion of the impacts of the rise of Polish nationalism on the development of the critical perspectives of Russian intellectuals, the heated discussions between Slavophilism and Westernism, two intellectual currents envisioning two distinct Russian national identities, will be examined. Having identified the roots of the Slavophilism-Westernism divide in the conf licting responses to Western hegemony over Russia, this chapter will explain why Herzen thought that, although Slavophiles and Westernizers faced different ways, like Janus or two-headed eagle, their hearts beat as one. It was only with Herzen’s synthesis of the communitarian features of the Russian peasant commune (legacy of Slavophilism) and the progressive characteristics of the West (legacy of Westernism) that the ideology of Russian socialism was articulated in Russia.

Russian high offcials on narod The word narod never had a clear-cut meaning; rather, it acquired different and overlapping meanings in the nineteenth century as a consequence of diverse attempts at defining Russian national identity. In different periods, it was used to mean “humanity”, “ethnicity”, “nationality”, and “popular masses”. As it appeared in religious texts and chronicles during the Muscovite period (fourteenth to seventeenth centuries), the term narod signified a collective that was differentiated from other groups of people only by its attachment to a particular territory. By the reign of Peter the Great (1682–1725), narod had already acquired an ethnic character, which ref lected the rising interest among Russian scholars in the ethnic composition of the state. The term remained as the main signifier of ethnicity in the course of the Peter’s reign (Knight 2000: 42–43). In the eighteenth century, ethnic connotations of the term were further reinforced by sentimentalism and Romanticism, which already convinced many intellectuals at the turn of the nineteenth century that one could find the secret of the Russian soul and the genuineness of the Russian national character in folk culture ( Jahn 2004: 56). From this time on, the split between the ethnic understanding of narod, derived from Russian antiquity, and the imperial conception of narod, embraced by the ruling dynasty, steadily widened. The official ideologists, who represented the opinions of the ruling dynasty, did not have a well-defined notion of narod at the turn of the nineteenth century. It was not until the inauguration of Count Sergei Uvarov as the Minister of Public Education (1833–1849) that the Russian government’s idea of nation crystallized into a concrete ideology. As a prolific ideologist and a significant bureaucrat, Uvarov formulated the official nationality in 1833 as “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality” (Pravoslavie, Samoderzhavie, and Narodnost). It was

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a peculiar blend of two conf licting concepts: dynastic legitimism and modern nationalism. Orthodoxy, which was believed to be the true form of Christianity and established the definite ethical norm for the individual and the nation, and autocracy, which meant the supremacy of the ruler over people based on a claim to represent divine authority on earth, did not cause much confusion. However, nationality was the most contentious component of the official trinity and could be explicated only with reference to Orthodoxy and autocracy (Riasanovsky 1969: 84–85, 95–96 and 124). Uvarov, the Tsar, and the loyal imperial public were not always unanimous in their opinions on nationality. The discussions of Uvarov’s formulation of official nationality were not simple or straightforward as they were not solely caused by the dissension between liberals and conservatives. Neither liberals and radicals from the political left, nor conservatives, who asserted their loyalty to the authorities, concurred with Uvarov’s certain policies. As the historian Sergei M. Soloviev’s ironic statement revealed, Uvarov pieced together these terms: Orthodoxy – while he was an atheist not believing in Christ even in the Protestant manner, autocracy – while he was a liberal, nationality – although he had not read a single Russian book in his life and wrote constantly in French or in German. (Riasanovsky 1969: 70–71) Despite the fact that this depiction of Uvarov was not truly complete and objective, it still gives us important clues about how this complexity manifested itself in the vagueness of his triad. It provided the government with a certain degree of f lexibility on political grounds, allowing it to opt for “either the nonethnic value of autocracy or ethnographic Russianness based on the Russian language and Orthodoxy” (Bilenky 2012: 206). Thus, this ambiguity should not be interpreted as a f law in the ideological construction of official nationality. Rather, various explanations put forth to account for its vague meaning facilitated its circulation among diverse political groups (Miller 2008: 142). As a result of these intense discussions, an essential friction occurred among the official ideologists who adopted the two diverse interpretations of nation, namely dynastic conservatism and Russian nationalism. The conservatives of the two groups mostly contradicted each other, despite the fact that some of them oscillated between the two interpretations. Dynastic conservatives stood on the defensive side, claiming that official nationality should be centered on preserving the empire and reinforcing the existing order. Nicholas I and prominent members of his government and his court, for instance, his closest associates, the subsequent heads of the Third Department (Security Police), Count Alexander Benckendorff (1826–1844), and Count Alexis Orlov (1844–1856), were the leading figures of the imperial loyalists (Bilenky 2012: 195–197).1 Uvarov was aware of the tension between empire and nation and thought that they were essentially incompatible. Notwithstanding his ideological

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propensity towards empire at the beginning of his career as a minister, he designed nationalistic education policies that prioritized Russian principles, and he ended up as a Russian nationalist. His final objective was to neutralize Polish and Baltic German nationalities by enacting linguistic Russification and acculturation. He was against pan-Slavism, and according to him, the true form of Russian nationality could be found in Russian faith, language, customs, and in Russians’ devotion to the throne, and should not be looked for in Slavic unity (Bilenky 2012: 188). As his case exposed, conservative nationalist ideas “as a powerful undercurrent” gradually infiltrated the political thinking of some of the ministers and high officials during the reign of Nicolas I. It was not surprising that Uvarov was forced to resign his ministry in 1849 because of his failure to provide sufficient support for official policy.2 Contrary to the proponents of dynastic conservatives, who comprised the highest echelon of the imperial state, Russian nationalists hailed mostly from humble origins and their ideas became much more widespread (Riasanovsky 1969: 180–181). This difference among the two groups revealed itself more clearly in their ref lection on Russia’s persistent social problems. For instance, to dynastic conservatives serfdom was an inevitable mainstay of Russian society, and any attempt at changing its structure, such as conferring general education upon the masses, would challenge its very basis, wipe out people’s submissiveness towards their masters, and should be avoided. Although Russian nationalists were part of the Russian establishment, they did not eschew the necessity of making reforms. Partly inspired by the emerging Romantic nationalism, they advocated abolishing serfdom, disseminating education among masses, and integrating them into the operation of imperial system (Riasanovsky 1969: 137–140). The gap between the dynastic wing represented by the capital, St. Petersburg, and Russian nationalists based in Moscow steadily widened during the 1830s and 1840s. The latter came into contact with the emerging Russian intelligentsia in Moscow, which was enthusiastically preoccupied with finding the meaning of “cultural nation”.

Russian intelligentsia on narod Derek Offord, in his essay on the meaning of narod, argues that the term narod (or “the Russian common people”) was not equivalent to “a clearly definable social entity”, but rather it was “a construct” framed by the nineteenth-century intelligentsia. This construct enabled the intelligentsia to imagine Russia as a nation and explain Russia’s unequal relationship with the West as well as the intelligentsia’s role within the nation, which remained one of the most contentious issues of the period (Offord 2010: 241). The term intelligentsia, which emerged at the turn of the nineteenth century as a transliteration of the Latin word intelligentia denoting abstract features of “understanding”, “intelligence”, or “intellect”, changed in the following decades, acquiring broader meanings including “consciousness, enlightenment, and civilization” as well as “national

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culture” or “national spirit”. These concepts and representations persisted in defining intelligentsia until the 1860s, during which time the term began to extensively denote a specific group of people rather than abstract concepts and ideas (Pipes 1971: 615–618; Knight 2006: 739–741).

Russian nobility The Russian intellectuals originated from the ranks of the nobility. The Russian nobility, which was a deeply divided class, never acquired any feudal characteristics in the history of imperial Russia, for Russia hardly experienced feudalism at all. Until Peter the Great introduced obligatory state service for the nobility, the personal element had determined the relationship between noblemen and the Tsar. Growing rationalization during Peter’s reign introduced more efficiency into the military and administrative establishments, specifically with the state’s reliance on professionals and foreigners. This also meant that privilege positions were not granted to members of prominent families or hereditary nobilities regardless of their service to the state. As a result of the subordination of the traditional relationship between the Tsar and noblemen to their efficiency in state affairs, the nobility became an outgrowth or outcome of the service system (Raeff 1966: 17). Michael Confino claims that, except for a tiny number of noblemen, the majority was motivated to receive formal education or study at university merely because they saw these pursuits as an extension of their government service, hoping that they could possibly elevate them to a better position in the Table of Ranks. As supporters of the imperial status quo, they adopted a “utilitarian and instrumental” approach towards “Westernization, modernity, intellectual pursuits, and knowledge” (Confino 2011: 89). Concurrently, a widening rift occurred between the nobility and bureaucracy, that is, career officials who were non-noble by birth and shared the interests of the bureaucratic state in the eighteenth century, when the nobility underwent a social transformation. The hereditary nobility had to compete with this rising class to take up more responsibility and achieve administrative leadership. It was during the reign of Catherine the Great (1762–1796) that all service obligations of the nobility were removed and their corporate privileges were more precisely defined. Despite partial alleviation of their grievances against the state and its bureaucracy with these actions, the service estate persisted in order to provide access to status, greater prosperity, and a full involvement in the cultural life of Russia (Raeff 1966: 34–121). Among the most radical noblemen, there emerged an idea of taking side with and serving the common people instead of the state; nevertheless, until the Decembrist revolt in 1825, these elites did not see any contradiction in serving both the state and the public at the same time, as state service had also been a deep-rooted practice. They realized after the revolt that this public identity, the critical roles required by it, and their devotion to the welfare of people were no longer compatible with the Russian realities; their service to the state ran counter to their public service and cultural leadership.

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The inevitable outcome was the feelings of alienation and a crisis of identity (Rabow-Edling 2006: 26).3 Starting from the reign of Nicholas I (1825–1855), the intellectuals of noble origin gradually vacated their positions at state services, withdrew from the military academies, and enrolled in universities. This was also concurrent with the development of a civilian education system aimed chief ly at training competent nonmilitary personnel, who had various social backgrounds, and recruiting them into the growing bureaucratic state apparatus. The inevitable outcome of this process was the encounter of the raznochintsy, who were commoners of “indeterminate origin”, with the rebelling young gentry at universities and in various intellectual circles (Malia 1961b: 6, 13–14). Despite the fact that the gentry assumed a prominent role in all spheres of intellectual development, the raznochintsy, albeit a minority, had a noted impact on the intellectual and psychological formation of this generation. The raznochintsy integrated with the intelligentsia, who channeled their discontent into the non-religious sphere and enabled them to produce conceptual tools to deal with their existential problems (Confino 2011: 96, 103). This encounter would take several decades to evolve into a populist movement at the turn of the 1870s.

The Russian intelligentsia as a social entity The Russian intelligentsia appeared as an actual social group with a shared identity and the same mode of thought in the 1860s. Nathaniel Knight argues that there was a close correlation between the construction and variation of Russian nationhood and the transformation of the concept of the Russian intelligentsia. He addresses the Polish uprising of 1863 to show how this critical historical moment engendered a change in the conceptualization of narod in the discourse of one of the leading figures in the Slavophile movement, Ivan Aksakov (1823– 1886). He argues that Aksakov did not use the term intelligentsia persistently and that he replaced it with the term obshchestvo (“society”); its reappearance as a distinct social group in writings of Aksakov occurred as a direct result of the Polish uprising of 1863 (Knight 2006). In the nineteenth century, obshchestvo was used to designate the upper classes of Russian society. Without referring to any social class, estate, guild, corporation, or circle, and taking it to mean an integral part of the organic unity of the nation, Aksakov used obshchestvo for educated people capable of taking initiative at moments of turmoil. Going back and forth between broad and narrow meanings of narod, “the nation as a whole” and “common people”, he emphasized the vulnerability of the latter and the protective role of the state at moments of crisis. But if the state takes strict measures on the pretext of ensuring public order, the nation would need a counterbalancing force, which was obshchestvo in Aksakov’s terminology, to neutralize the pressure of the state and keep the nation’s organic unity. The functions of the classless intelligentsia were “the possession of consciousness and the representation of truly national

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principles”, and the nation was not able to remain intact against the pressure of the state unless they acquired these virtues (Pollard 1964: 14; Knight 2006: 242–243). Dispensing with the term obshchestvo, Aksakov started to use the term “intelligentsia” from the beginning of 1863 but still addressed it as an abstract entity, namely as “the agents of the consciousness of the nation”. It was only after he encountered the Polish uprising triggered by the Polish elites and educated classes that his thoughts about the distinct social status and the function of intelligentsia were crystallized. The Russian government, public, and intelligentsia inferred diverse ideas from the Polish uprising of 1863.4 For instance, Herzen, then a Russian political exile in Europe, articulated his support of the Polish rebels in his publications and suggested discreetly that they add an emphasis on “the peasants’ right to land” and “the autonomy of the border provinces” to their program in order to assure the Russian public that their struggle was not against the Russian people but against the Tsar (Kelly 2016: 454). What was striking was the fact that even though almost all of them were against Polish national demands, this uprising longing for national liberation raised envy among many Moscow and Petersburg intellectuals (Maiorova 2010: 100). They were concerned about the lack of national consciousness among the Russian people, for which they blamed the monarchy’s supranational policies (including its leniency towards the Poles) and its refusal of the civic aspects of the nationhood. They felt obligated to raise the national consciousness, which, according to them, would not be created from scratch, as it already displayed itself at some crucial moments when the Russian nation stepped onto the historical scene as a decisive political actor against external enemies. Russian mythology and the symbolic power of war memories were instrumentalized as part of an attempt to construct “nation” as a meaningful entity, separate from the state. As this construction of Russian national discourse occurred against Polish national demands, the Russian state as imagined in this discourse was not an oppressive apparatus against its people; on the contrary, it was a rampart to protect the interests of the Russian nation vis-à-vis its external enemy (Maiorova 2010: 3rd Chapter). The intelligentsia was not so much concerned with the reconciliation of the Russian nation and the state, but rather with its responsibility towards society as a precursor of the cultural nation. Their enlightened and European outlook distinguished them from the monarchy and its bureaucratic apparatus. They adopted a certain way of life and thought, which differentiated them from the other sections of society, not to mention narod (Pipes 1961: 48; Kochetkova 2010: 17). Moreover, as aforementioned, the intelligentsia’s noble roots placed them in a precarious position with regard to their function in Russian society. Liah Greenfeld claims that nobility, once gained, became the source of a lasting crisis of identity. In order to overcome this crisis, noblemen espoused the cause of a national idea. Nationalism provided them with a robust identity, which compensated for the loss of their status and dignity as noblemen vis-à-vis the Russian state. And, to put it in Greenfeld’s words, “they were beginning to experience the therapeutic

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effects of national pride, and their identity as noblemen was giving way to the national identity of Russians” (Greenfeld 1993: 209 and 220). The “intellectual circles” (kruzhki), which consisted of usually young men of noble origin from St. Petersburg and Moscow, functioned in order to overcome the isolation of their members and fostered a stimulating atmosphere for thoughtful discussions. The old Moscow aristocracy predominated in these circles, rather than the nobility of St. Petersburg, renowned for its service orientation as well as its enduring, close links to the court and the throne. The Moscow aristocracy kept aloof from the court society and culture of St. Petersburg and the latter’s service to the state. It also had an earlier and more thorough engagement with Western culture and its sophisticated political and philosophical ideas than the St. Petersburg nobility. This also enabled them to be less isolated from Russia’s past and to raise a criticism of the court nobility of St. Petersburg for their estrangement from their roots (Lincoln 1978: 253). The Moscow aristocracy never felt indebted to the service system, as they obtained their high ranks long before the compulsory state service. Their more confrontational attitudes towards the Tsar’s rigid regulations, in comparison to the moderate attitude of St. Petersburg nobility, were derived from this relative autonomy. Despite their turbulent relations with the state, the Moscow aristocracy could channel their energy into the literary and philosophical discussions within Moscow salons, creating their original style, as a consequence of which emerged the ideological conf lict between the so-called Slavophiles and Westernizers (Lincoln 1978: 254).

Slavophiles and Westernizers What crystallized the division between the Slavophiles and Westernizers were the reactions the Russian intelligentsia showed towards the “Philosophical Letters”, which had been written by Peter Chaadaev (1794–1856) in French in 1829 and the first of which was finally published in Russian in the liberal Moscow journal Telescope in 1836. Chaadaev, an educated nobleman from Moscow, fought Napoleon’s army between 1812 and 1817 as a cavalry officer and was back in his country full of genuine patriotism, which was prompted by a new bond he developed between himself and his nation. For three years after the summer of 1823, he was again in Europe, but this time as a civilian, and he traveled to countries such as Germany, France, England, and Italy, which allowed him to compare their histories and cultures with Russia’s. In the first philosophical letter, he attempted to situate Russia’s place in world history vis-à-vis the West and Western civilization, and he arrived at this critical judgment: [W]e belong to none of the great families of mankind; we are neither of the West nor of the East, and we possess the traditions of neither. Somehow divorced from time and space, the universal education of mankind has not touched upon us. (Grier 2015: 33)

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Refusing the secularized aspects of Western civilization and underlining the importance of religion as the only true guiding force in life and history, Chaadaev claimed that religion had the power to transform people’s lives and construct the Kingdom of God on earth, so long as the intellectual, moral, and cultural unification of all mankind was maintained. His startling conviction was that the order of human history would be provided by the principle of unity, which was union with the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Nations would become successful, according to him, only when they underwent the universal process of merging with the Catholic Church; otherwise they would remain outside the course of human civilization (Lavrin 1963: 274–288; Grier 2015: 35). The Russians’ adaptation of the Eastern Orthodox form of Christianity from Byzantium at the end of the tenth century, and the subsequent Mongol yoke which lasted more than two hundred years (1240–1480), interrupted Russia’s contact with the West. Russia made no contribution to the cultural achievements of the High Middle Ages and Renaissance and remained isolated, which brought about the failure of Russia’s “unique civilization”. Chaadaev established a link between Catholicism and the cultural and intellectual developments of Europe, asserting that being merely Christian was not enough to be European, and thus Russia did not belong to the European community of nations (Tolz 2001: 80–81, McNally and Tempest 1991: 15). Under the inf luence of Romanticism, Chaadaev ventured to introduce his radical account of Russian history and culture in his first “Philosophical Letter”. His arguments were found so provocative that he was declared insane by the Tsar, who was a staunch supporter of official nationality. However, this reaction backfired. Because the letter was officially denounced, the Russian public regarded it as worth reading. Despite the fact that the government seized all copies of the journal in which Chaadaev’s article appeared, his letter found a way to be circulated among Russian intellectual society. His motivation to show “the historical nullity of Russia, especially in contrast to the West” inf lamed discussions on the nature of Russia, which provoked and impelled the Russian intelligentsia to reconsider itself and finally led to the emergence of Slavophilism and Westernism (Riasanovsky 1977: 1176 and 1183). The intellectual debate over the Russian nation and identity was inevitably held with reference to Russia’s encounter with the West, and Slavophilism and Westernism produced alternative responses to it (Greenfeld 1993: 254 and 263). The Slavophiles felt an urgent need to articulate the theory of the Russian enlightenment in order to overcome the feeling of cultural backwardness in relation to the West. This specific Russian enlightenment, which comprised all progressive aspects of Russian national culture, would gain significance as long as it made an original contribution to universal progress and history. Moreover, this enlightenment was not restricted to the limits of reason in contradistinction to the Western enlightenment. Freeing the mind from the confinement of mechanical reasoning, the Russian enlightenment enabled people to rely on their independent moral thinking. According to the theorization of the Slavophiles,

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the national core constituting the idea of the Russian enlightenment was based on the spiritual principles of “true Christianity”, which found its expression in the teachings of the Orthodox Church Fathers. The Slavophiles merged religious identity with nationality, faith with reason, and the soul with the mind as the unique Russian contribution to the universal enlightenment. Such a ref lection thus elevated the Russian enlightenment to the highest moral sphere, where one can find the very essence of the “Russian soul” (Rabow-Edling 2006: 85–90). The Russian intellectuals ref lected on the negative aspects of Western modernization from about 1840 to 1880 with reference to the term “Russian soul” (Williams 1970: 588). One of the tenets of Slavophilism was predicated on the idea that the common people (or narod) were the bearers of the “Russian soul”, since they had not been transformed by Western education and had kept Russia’s ancient culture intact (Rabow-Edling 2006: 90–91; Offord 2010: 244). Yet, such an argument was not totally novel for the educated sections of the Russian society, which had already been acquainted with the ideas of Romantic nationalism since the eighteenth century by virtue of freemasonry and sentimentalism. Freemasonry and sentimentalism functioned in opposition to the rationalist and cosmopolitan nature of the Enlightenment. However, it was only after the 1820s, when the ideas of the German Romanticists were extensively disseminated in Russia, that the theoretical and philosophical sides of Romantic nationalism developed (Thaden 1954: 501–504). Isaiah Berlin states that the German Romantic thinkers appealed to “aesthetic or biological notions” and developed “spiritual insight” and “intuitive knowledge of connections” for the issues that could not be scientifically grasped by the rational mind. He adds that one should follow this line of thinking in order to comprehend the inner essences, structures, and motives of individuals, societies, and historical periods. Otherwise, it would be impossible to explain how certain compositions constitute unities while others do not (Berlin 1994: 137–139). The inf luence of such Romantic thinking and sensibility took the Slavophiles’ thoughts to extremes, specifically with respect to their views on traditional and historical Russia. Based on these romantic views, they aimed at reviving the political, social, and cultural unity of narod that, they claimed, had weakened and even disintegrated during the modernization process launched by Peter the Great (Pomper 1993: 41). The Slavophiles criticized the West by using Western conceptual tools and, while referring to their principles of social order, situated Western notions in a dualistic conf lict with Russian ones: rational vs. natural, artificial vs. organic, coercive vs. spontaneous, and contractual (based on interests) vs. consensual (based on convictions). They identified “‘fraternal love’, ‘communalism’, ‘moral consensus’ and ‘inner freedom’” as the main elements characterizing the history of Russia vis-à-vis the West, which was marked by “coercion, law, ‘sinful individualism’ and ‘external freedom’” (Nahirny 1983: 92). Andrzej Walicki argues that according to the Slavophiles, two separate and incompatible social formations occurred in nineteenth-century Russia. The first one consisted of

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“the people” who stayed loyal to the values of a traditional community bearing organic togetherness and harmony, and the second one was “society” constituted by a mass of isolated individuals who were distinguished from “the people” by their artificial and rational life, the inner conf lict, and the tension between them. For Walicki, this Slavophile contrast between the people and society was congruous with the distinction made by the German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies between community (Gemeinschaft) and society (Gesellschaft). The Slavophiles believed that the Old Russia epitomized Gemeinschaft because she was formed without being exposed to the rational tradition of Roman culture and jurisprudence, which was the driving force behind the process of doing away with the “community principles” in the West (Walicki 2015: 184–185). Ivan Kireevsky (1806–1856), a pioneer of Slavophile thinking, addressed the same issues in articles from the period of his intellectual maturity. Kireevsky compared Russia with the West in his article, “On the Nature of European Culture and Its Relation to the Culture of Russia (1852)”, and identified three elements of early European civilization with which Russia was unfamiliar: the Roman Catholic Church, the ancient Roman world, and the emergence of national states through conquest (Kireevsky 1978: 183). After elaborating on how the principles of social structure and personality differed in Russia and Western countries on account of these historical and spiritual differences, he stated that “[t]he entire edifice of the Western social order may be said to rest on the development of the personal right of ownership, so that personality itself – in juridical terms – is no more than an expression of this right”. He further emphasized that Russian society, by nature, was alien to the right of private property as the land belonged to the community (obshchina) (Kireevsky 1978: 199). The Slavophiles claimed that the peasant commune was a repository of virtues that was lacking in the West, as well as among the Westernized elites of Russia who were exposed to the moral detriments of the West and who “became colonizers in their own country”. The Slavophiles’ detestation of the Western “self ” engendered their idealization of the peasant commune embodying the people (narod). It was based on spiritual, supra-individual, supra-rational consciousness and an organic togetherness of the community, or sobornost, as it was coined by Alexis Khomyakov (1804–1860). It meant the purest form of relationship constructed on the principles of truth, love, and inner freedom among the people and between the people and the Church (Walicki 2015: 173 and 179–182). In short, obshchina was more than a rural institution, and the Slavophiles firmly emphasized the significance of going back to the obshchina, which would contribute substantially to the creation of a national and moral fabric against the abstract rationalism of Western civilization. While the government and its defenders used the term narodnost to imply the idiosyncratic, historical institutions of the Russian state (among which the most sacred was autocracy), the Slavophiles, who gave more prominence to nationality and Orthodoxy than autocracy, used it to designate the masses or the nation as a whole. By that means they detached the people from the government, ascribing

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to the former a true, and the latter a false, national past (Malia 1961a: 284 and 294). However, as representatives of the hereditary nobility, the Slavophiles remained firmly attached to the maintenance of social order in order to keep their traditional and economic statuses intact, and they craved the preservation of the patriarchal order existing in the countryside. In this regard, their ideas towards the people can be termed “paternalistic populism” (Malia 1961a: 285). Such an understanding was premised on the Romantic Slavophile idea that, due to a robust national consciousness and moral harmony in rural Russia, class tension or any revolutionary attempt would not be pertinent to the Russian case, as it was in the West. Yet, it could be readily observed that, in case any social disturbances occurred (e.g., the emancipation of the serfs and its devastating outcomes), they seemed disposed to secure their privileged positions (Hughes 2000: 170–171 and 175). The Slavophiles stood for civil liberties, a free press, and free speech and objected to “the principles of rationalism, legalism and compulsion” and “the absolute state” prying into the fundamentals of Russian society, which they believed commenced with the reign of Peter the Great. However, their idea of autocracy was not ill-disposed, and their attitude toward the state was both moderate and ambiguous. The Slavophiles were liable to support autocracy not only due to its existence as an organic element in Russian history and life but also because of the way it bestowed the whole burden of authority on the shoulders of a single person, consequently relieving the people from this liability. If power (or the state) was evil in any case, the best option was that it was held by a few men. From the Slavophiles’ point of view, autocracy was not absolute but indivisible, meaning that any arrangement enabling the people’s participation in politics would spoil the Russian soul. While a careful liberalization of Russian society typified their social program, they were more prudent about their political program, which alternated somewhere between autocracy and a constitutional monarchy. Therefore, by “freedom”, the Slavophiles meant freedom from politics. The only political realm where people would willingly participate was the land assembly (zemskii sobor). The Slavophiles deeply supported the idea that in an autocracy people had natural feel of political disinclination that concomitantly underpinned their loyalty to the Tsar and their landlords (Riasanovsky 1976: 195; Malia 1961a: 285–286). The Westernizers came from the same social and educational background. The intellectual feud among the Slavophiles and the Westernizers did not prevent them from sharing almost the same intellectual atmosphere (universities, circles, literary groups) and resorting to nearly identical concepts in order to express their common concern, which was the future of Russia (Riasanovsky 2005: 156–157). Both the Westernizers and the Slavophiles were motivated by the feeling of Russian inferiority vis-à-vis the West and the hostility against the abhorrent consequences of this situation. However, this sense of weakness called for different answers in the two groups. In a general sense, while it resulted in unending self-glory among the Slavophiles, who firmly believed

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in Russian particularism owing to its so-called distinguishing and invaluable historical and cultural development, this sense of weakness caused Westernizers to detest the existing world and compelled them to change it. For the latter, what distinguished Russia from the West was its backwardness, not its unique pattern of development, and only the adoption of the Western model of modernization would bridge the gap between Russia and the West (Grier 2015: 33).

Alexander Herzen (1812–1870) Despite the fact that rigid opposition characterized the relationship between the Slavophiles and Westernizers, Alexander Herzen, one of the prominent Westernizers, managed to establish a dialogue with the Slavophiles. Unlike his fellow Westernizers, he noticed and paid attention to the populist potential in Slavophile thought, especially to the Slavophiles’ discussion of the peasant commune. Venturi claims that, regardless of the fact that it was not deliberately planned by the Slavophiles, their enduring discussions on the peasant commune affected the way socialism was addressed in Russia. It was no longer a subject of intellectual deliberations that seemed not relevant to Russia, but rather a very crucial question to be answered specifically in relation to the Russian peasant case. Venturi adds that [b]y keeping alive the discussion on the earliest forms of agrarian communities in Russia, which had begun in the eighteenth century and had already assumed such importance for the Decembrists, these supporters of a backward and patriarchal country life prepared the ground for Herzen’s Populism. (Venturi 2001: 20) Being an avowed opponent of Orthodoxy and autocracy and a supporter of social change, Herzen claimed that the Slavophiles’ excessive preoccupation with an imaginary past aimed at reaching an imaginary future prevented them from grasping the horrific realities of their present and led them to dismiss the idea of Western enlightenment as a hope for Russia (Malia 1961a: 302). He found the Slavophile conceptualization of the opposition between people and government completely theoretical and not qualified for essential political development. Nevertheless, Herzen was impressed by the Slavophile notion of the virtues of the native land and its oppressed people, since it recalled to him his patriotism, which he had begun to absorb early in his childhood with the tales of Great Fatherland War (1812). Moreover, his feeling of alienation, which led him to devote himself to intellectual pursuits, was twofold, firstly because he had fragile bonds with the gentry class as he was an illegitimate son of a gentry man, and, secondly because, as an intellectual, he was subjected to the oppression of the Nicholas era. Herzen, as a result, firmly adopted the “democratic logic of gentry nationalism”, which for him meant that the nation would not be complete unless

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it embraced all of its members on an equal footing. Despite his objections to the Slavophiles’ paternalistic idealization of the nation and their ambiguous attitudes towards the state, from them he adopted certain ideas that stood at the center of his subsequent intellectual development (Malia 1961a: 300). Herzen looked at Russia from a broader European social and political context when he was a political exile in France and England et al. After witnessing the failure of the 1848 revolution, he espoused the idea that contrary to “old” (bourgeois) Europe, which was in its death throes, Russia characterized a “young” nation owing to its revolutionary potential, which was capable of shattering the basis of autocracy and revitalizing European civilization. He fervently claimed that, given this distinctive potential, bourgeois development was not unavoidable for Russia, which had the potential to bypass the process of capitalist development to achieve socialism. Russia’s comparative economic backwardness, to Herzen, should be seen as an advantage, because the absence of capitalist development rendered pre-capitalist social and economic structures untouched in Russia, especially among the peasantry. In short, Herzen upheld the erstwhile idea that Russia’s backwardness was in fact a virtue.5 Herzen differentiated the state from the people, affirming that nothing was essentially Russian in autocracy and no one capitalized on it except for the autocrat and a negligible minority. Large segments of Russian society, who were deemed by Herzen as natural-born anarchists and revolutionaries, were unyielding to Russia’s past and present condition, which subjugated them. The only entity in which the true life of Russia could be observed was the peasant commune (obshchina), as the people of it opted for remaining far from state interference. The idea of the state was irreconcilable with the functioning of the Russian commune, and as Herzen stated, “[c]entralization is contrary to the Slavic spirit; federalism is far more natural to its character” (Malia 1961a: 402). According to him, despite the intrusions of the Tsars and the Tsarist state into the peasant commune, as well as the interference of Tatars, Westernized landowners, and German bureaucracy, the peasant commune survived and functioned as a crucial tool to preserve Russian national salvation (Offord 2005: 176). Herzen neither made any definite explanations of revolutionary forces that might be channeled into a struggle nor dwelled upon the outcomes these forces might cause. He attributed the possibility of a revolution in Russia to the distinctive features of the land system, as his following question reveals: Is it a surprise that there were persons who understood that a people which had the obshchina and the artel, as well as an independent attitude towards the ownership of land, was nearer to an economic, i.e., social, revolution than the Roman-feudal, bourgeois Europe? (Lavrin 1962: 309) That said, Herzen oriented his revolutionary interests more towards the issue of liberation. He prioritized the liberation of cultural, intellectual, and moral

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elites from constraints imposed on them in various social and political contexts (Offord 2015: 121). According to Herzen, these elites, including a section of the progressive Moscow nobility like himself, represented the dynamic core of Russia and served as a firm basis for the revolutionary movement. However, for the revolutionary potential of the elites to be fully realized, the support of the Russian peasantry, which embodied the communitarian essence of the Russian national character, was required. Thus, not the Russian government, but the united revolutionary forces of the progressive intelligentsia and the socialist peasantry could be identified as truly Russian. For Herzen, this rendered revolution, fundamentally “a nationalistic idea with its roots in the Romantic age” (Offord 2015: 121). It is remarkable that Herzen did not fall back on political economy in his critique of capitalism, since he raised it from the aristocratic perspective (Walicki 1969: 11).6 Herzen was against the bourgeois development of Russia and denounced bourgeois society in Europe as a sociocultural phenomenon, which, to him, came out of degenerate “old world”. His disdain of the bourgeois class as unrefined and corrupt upstarts was somewhat related to his noble roots. He also questioned the claim that the Western European model of development could be valid for anyone. These ideas were inherited by the actors of Russian socialist thought, including the Populists of the late 1860s and the 1870s, as well as Lenin (Tolz 2010: 206). Furthermore, Herzen stated that the bourgeois class immersed itself in merely economic questions, disregarding political matters such as the rights of man and patriotism. To him, this was a reactionary attitude that deliberately ignored the acquisition of the previous revolutionary and Romantic periods. He expressed his sincere grief about the prevalence of materialism, utilitarianism, and a mechanical and prosaic understanding of life in capitalist societies at the cost of tenderness and Romantic poetry (Offord 2005: 183–184). Contrary to Europe, where the revolutionary movements were doomed to failure a short while ago due to bourgeois hegemony, the collective and communitarian spirit of narod, which was materialized in obshchina, was still very vigorous in Russia, despite the disintegrating and alienating effects of capitalism and centralization. Herzen believed that this communitarian essence of Russian national identity and its associated traditions and customs, which the Russian autocracy constantly tried to suppress, would provide the Russian people with the necessary vital energy to lead a revolutionary movement against the autocracy. Walicki states that Herzen was not a “petty-bourgeois socialist”; he was a “gentry revolutionary” and a “gentry socialist”, a disappointed aristocratic liberal, a disillusioned Westernizer, who, having despaired about the West, looked for consolation in the thought that his own country had not yet reached its “final form”. (Walicki 1969: 12–13)

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Herzen’s “Russian socialism” launched the theories of Russian populism, which were an inspiration for many in the revolutionary generation. One should also acknowledge his inf luence on the strong emphasis the Populist movement placed on individual and national liberties. Despite his idealization of the peasant commune, he supported the abolition of serfdom in Russia, which, according to him, obstructed the economic development of peasants and kept Russia in slavery (Berlin 1994: 201; Venturi 2001: 21). Notwithstanding his glorification of narod and of Russian national identity, Herzen never subscribed to any version of chauvinism, as evidenced by his liberatory stance towards Polish national demands. Lenin praised Herzen’s support of the Polish nation’s right to independence during the uprising of 1863 by noting that he saved the “honour of Russian democracy” (Walicki 2015: 268).

Conclusion During the 1850s, Marx, Engels, and many Russian democrats in exile saw the peasant commune as one of the crucial pillars of Russian autocracy. They also rejected the idea that the Russian commune would be able to constitute the basis of a revolution in Russia. A letter to Marx (1852) reads that this assumption was based on “the old Pan-Slavic dodge of transmogrifying the old Slav system of communal property into communism and depicting the Russian peasants as born communists”. According to Marx and Engels, Herzen and other Russian political exiles who supported the peasant commune subscribed to a confused version of Russian nationalism (Anderson 2010: 43–45). However, for Marx, Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War (in 1856) was a turning point, since it caused a legitimacy crisis for the regime and contributed to the possibility of a revolutionary movement in Russia. By the end of 1850s, Marx came to refer to the Russian peasant commune not as a pillar of despotism but as a possible motive force for revolutionary resistance in Russia (Anderson 2010: 54–55). Marx and Engels’ answer to the question of whether the Russian obshchina could enable Russia’s direct transition to communist common ownership, or conversely, whether Russia should follow the same historical evolution of the West was clear: “If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting-point for a communist development” (Marx and Engels 1978: 471–472).7 Even if it is not clear whether Herzen’s populism had a role in Marx’s changing stance towards the socialist potentials of obshchina, Marx’s familiarity with his works may be taken as sufficient evidence to argue that Herzen might be one of the critical sources of the change in Marx’s perspective of transition to socialism in “underdeveloped” nations.

Notes 1 While Benckendorff, a Baltic German nobleman, identified a nation with its monarch, Orlov, opposing local patriotism, defended the significance of loyalty towards the

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3

4

5

6 7

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Russian Empire. Yet, both Benckendorff and Orlov alluded to the idea that empire and nation were at odds with each other. For an examination of how his Official Nationality “directly challenged the Romantic idea of nationality”, see the recent book by Lesley Chamberlain, Ministry of Darkness: How Sergei Uvarov Created Conservative Modern Russia (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), specifically Chapter 11. Recalcitrant army officials of the Decembrist revolt and other Russian elites up to the 1840s retained a basic identification with the autocracy, remained state servants, and were dubbed “proto- intelligentsia” (Malia 1961b: 2). It is not within the scope of this article to question the existence and examine the characteristic or degree of alienation, which discloses itself differently among the internally diverse Russian nobility. For a review of recent literature on this subject, see Martin 2020. Alexander I concurred with the formation of a Kingdom of Poland, along with the constitution, parliament (the Sejm), and army, which would be kept under his sway. Although Nicholas I declined his support of the constitution, the Kingdom enjoyed a short-lived but greater autonomy compared to other border regions within the Empire. The so-called November Uprising (1830–1831) provided a venue for Nicholas I to reach his goal of integrating the Kingdom into the empire, and attenuating the Polish nobility’s (the szlachta’s) already existing cultural inf luence within the Western Provinces. That the szlachta persisted in not making concessions regarding the Poles’ centuries-old, inviolable rights and characters, especially with respect to their perception of themselves as a nation (and not just a people), engendered the tension between them and the Russian ruling elite. Under the inf luence of European Romanticism, the Polish elites identified the leading role for Poles as that which would “bring to the depth of the East true enlightenment and the understanding of the rights of man” (Gentes 2017: 39–42). Deriving originally from Slavophilism, these ideas gave rise to Herzen’s version of Russian messianism (Duncan 2000: Chapter 2 and 48–49). Tolz claims that accepting Russia’s backwardness as an advantage had already started in the eighteenth century. It formed the basis of Russian nationalism and became the main standpoint from which Russia evaluated herself vis-à-vis the West. (Tolz 2001: 81). As is known, the issues of art, literature, philosophy, and theology prevailed over the subjects of economy in the discussions of the majority of the early populists up until the 1880s (Kitching 1982). It was published in their preface to the Russian Edition (1882) of The Manifesto of the Communist Party. See also Marx’s correspondence with the Otecestvenniye Zapisky https ://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/11/russia.htm (accessed November 4, 2020).

References Anderson, K.B. (2010). Marx at the Margins. On Nationalism, Ethnicity and Non-Western Societies. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Berlin, I. (1994). Russian Thinkers. London: Penguin Books. Bilenky, S. (2012). Romantic Nationalism in Eastern Europe. Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian Political Imaginations. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Chamberlain, L. (2020). Ministry of Darkness: How Sergei Uvarov Created Conservative Modern Russia. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Confino, M. (2011). Russia before the ‘Radiant Future’: Essays in Modern History, Culture and Society. New York: Berghahn Books. Duncan, P.J.S. (2000). Russian Messianism: Third Rome, Revolution, Communism and After. London: Routledge.

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Engelstein, L. (2009). Slavophile Empire. Imperial Russia's Illiberal Path. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Gentes, A.A. (2017). The Mass Deportation of Poles to Siberia, 1863–1880. New York: Palgrave, Macmillan. Greenfeld, L. (1993). Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Grier, P.T. (2015). The Russian Idea and the West. In: R. Bova, ed., Russia and Western Civilization: Cultural and Historical Encounters. London: Routledge, pp. 23–77. Hughes, M. (2000). State and Society in the Political Thought of the Moscow Slavophiles. Studies in East European Thought, 52(3), pp. 159–183. Jahn, H.F. (2004). ‘Us’: Russians on Russianness. In: S. Franklin and E. Widdis, eds., National Identity in Russian Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 53–73. Kelly, A.M. (2016). The Discovery of Chance: The Life and Thought of Alexander Herzen. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kireevsky, I. (1978). On the Nature of European Culture and Its Relation to the Culture of Russia. In: M. Raeff, ed., Russian Intellectual History: An Anthology. New Jersey: Humanities Press, pp. 175–207. Kitching, G. (1982). Development and Underdevelopment in Historical Perspective. Populism, Nationalism and Industrialization. London: Methuen. Knight, N. (2000). Ethnicity, Nationality and the Masses: Narodnost’ and Modernity in Imperial Russia. In: D.L. Hoffmann and Y. Kotsonis, eds., Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices. London: Macmillan, pp. 41–64. Knight, N. (2006). Was the Intelligentsia Part of the Nation? Visions of Society in PostEmancipation Russia. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and EurAsian History, 7(4), pp. 733–758. Kochetkova, I. (2010). The Myth of the Russian Intelligentsia Old Intellectuals in the New Russia. London: Routledge. Lavrin, J. (1962). Populists and Slavophiles. Russian Review, 21(4), pp. 307–317. Lavrin, J. (1963). Chaadayev and the West. Russian Review, 22(3), pp. 274–288. Lincoln, W.B. (1978). Nicholas I. Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russians. London: Penguin Books. Maiorova, O. (2010). From the Shadow of Empire: Defining the Russian Nation through Cultural Mythology, 1855–1870. Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press. Malia, M. (1961a). Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism. London: Oxford University Press. Malia, M. (1961b). What Is the Intelligentsia? In: R. Pipes, ed., The Russian Intelligentsia. New York: Colombia University Press, pp. 1–18. Martin, A.M. (2020). The Alienated Russian Nobility? Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 21(4), pp. 861–875. Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1978). Manifesto of the Communist Party. In: R.C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, pp. 469–500. McNally, R. and Tempest, R. (1991). Philosophical Works of Peter Chaadaev Sovietica, Volume 56. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Miller, A. (2008). The Romanov Empire and Nationalism. Budapest, NY: CEU Press. Nahirny, V.C. (1983). The Russian Intelligentsia: From Torment to Silence. London: Transaction. Offord, D. (2005). Journeys to a Graveyard Perceptions of Europe in Classical Russian Travel Writing. Dordrecht: Springer. Offord, D. (2010). The People. In: W. Leatherbarrow and D. Offord, eds., A History of Russian Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 241–262.

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Offord, D. (2015). From National Backwardness to Revolutionary Leadership: Alexander Herzen's Book on the Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia. In: R. Hammersley, ed., Revolutionary Moments: Reading Revolutionary Texts. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 117–124. Pipes, R. (1961). The Historical Evaluation of the Russian Intelligentsia. In: R. Pipes, ed., The Russian Intelligentsia. New York: Colombia University Press, pp. 47–62. Pipes, R. (1971). ‘Intelligentsia’ from the German ‘Intelligenz’?: A Note. Slavic Review, 30(3), pp. 615–618. Pollard, A.P. (1964). The Russian Intelligentsia: The Mind of Russia. California Slavic Studies, 3–1, pp. 1–32. Pomper, P. (1993). The Russian Revolutionary Intelligentsia. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson. Rabow-Edling, S. (2006). Slavophile Thought and the Politics of Cultural Nationalism. Albany: State University of New York Press. Raeff, M. (1966). Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Riasanovsky, N.V. (1969). Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825–1855. Berkeley: University of California Press. Riasanovsky, N.V. (1976). A Parting of Ways: Government and the Educated Public in Russia (1801-1855). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Riasanovsky, N.V. (1977). On Lamennais, Chaadaev and the Romantic Revolt in France and Russia. The American Historical Review, 82(5), pp. 1165–1186. Riasanovsky, N.V. (2005). Russian Identities: A Historical Survey. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thaden, E.C. (1954). The Beginnings of Romantic Nationalism in Russia. American Slavic and East European Review, 13(4), pp. 500–521. Tolz, V. (2001). Inventing the Nation: Russia. London: Oxford University Press. Tolz, V. (2010). The West. In: W. Leatherbarrow and D. Offord, eds., A History of Russian Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 197–215. Venturi, F. (2001). Roots of Revolution. A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in 19th Century Russia. London: Phoenix Press. Walicki, A. (1969). The Controversy over Capitalism. Studies in the Social Philosophy of the Russian Populists. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Walicki, A. (2015). The Flow of Ideas: Russian Thought from the Enlightenment to the ReligiousPhilosophical Renaissance. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Williams, R.C. (1970). The Russian Soul: A Study in European Thought and NonEuropean Nationalism. Journal of the History of Ideas, 31(4), pp. 573–588.

PART III

Anti-colonial nation

7 THE ARAB NATION, THE CHINESE MODEL, AND THEORIES OF SELFRELIANT DEVELOPMENT1 Max Ajl

During the Bandung era, c. 1955–1980, it was widely understood that state sovereignty was the treasured achievement of the national and nationalist liberation struggles and that the denial of sovereignty through colonialism had been central to the political history of capitalism and underdevelopment. In the new millennium, such talk is now considered passé. The notion of any synergy between the state, sovereignty, nationalism, and development in the periphery of the world system has been all but erased in most social theory. Theorizing about the South often reduces it to autogenetic rentier states, neo-patrimonial entities, or blossoming “regimes”. There is a diffuse and seldom-stated stance that history has surpassed the national question and turned it into a curio of interest for antiquarians or raw cultural putty that is only of use for demagogues (Patnaik 2020) or, from a different perspective, that national-popular politics shatters internationalism into a myriad of jagged territorial fragments. The argument for sidestepping state and nation is that nation-states and calcified core-periphery distinctions no longer help us understand development and maldevelopment. Instead, we are, supposedly, in an era of helter-skelter accumulation, a scattering of nodes that does not map onto core-periphery or North-South coordinates. It is then best, in the words of Marxist geographer David Harvey, “to abandon the idea of imperialism” (Harvey 2016: 171). It would then follow that the national question is not helpful in organizing thought and practice toward popular development.2 Such ref lexive anti-nationalism is methodologically anti-materialist and ahistorical in five ways. First, it suggests that nationalism is identical over time and space, rather than one component of a series of historically bounded sequences, and that, at high noon, it was part of a national liberation politics that enveloped Africa (Neocosmos 2016: 112ff, 158–159, 173). Second, it a priori excludes the notion that nationalism could again be emancipatory, on the grounds that it has

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been repressive, a statement as logical as claiming that because knives cut throats, they cannot cut bonds. Third, it runs against the grain of struggle in modern history: nationalism has been a key political grammar for the major anti-systemic struggles of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries (Gilbert 2015, Moyo and Yeros 2011: 3–31). Fourth, if imperialism rests on foreclosed autonomy over national decisions and non-existent self-determination, the resulting f lows of value from the periphery and semi-periphery to the core and the uneven accumulation such f lows forge and reinforce, the national question is necessary to organize thinking about the relationship between anti-imperialism and popular development. Indeed, as a rapidly swelling mass of research attests, imperialism still separates the world into zones of unequal accumulation (Cope 2019, Smith 2016, Suwandi 2019). And fifth, the core uses its own states’ mechanisms to reshape if not shatter state mechanisms in the periphery to protect and expand the gap between such zones, either turning the state against the nation or ripping the state from the nation. It would be odd to suggest that national and nationalist logics for organizing struggles for human emancipation and structures for human social reproduction and f lourishing should be abandoned as imperialism seeks precisely that abandonment through the political shattering of states by the dismantling of institutions and dissolution of ideas of state and nation. It is, then, necessary to consider the role of state and nation in popular development. We ought to do so with an understanding of the past, present, and possible futures, aware of the capacities and limits of the state and aware that nationalism cuts both ways. Just as we ought not forget that merely because knives cut throats, they cannot also cut bonds, we also ought to remember that knives can, still, cut throats. The broad political-spatial arena in which I consider such questions is the Arab region.3 Within that zone, amidst an agenda of externally induced fracturing, especially along sectarian lines, “capital” is “assaulting the state as reason and as an idea” of pluralism and as an institutional platform capable of giving heft to popular demands (Kadri 2015: 110).4 It does so not merely through the fractionation of sodalities into ever-more-minute units.5 It also evaporates the very physical and political institutions that compose the state, including by inf lating a ballooning civil society that privatizes traditional state functions, by externally fueled post-war reconstruction that engineers the state as a sectarian structure, and by devastating de-development, which literally disappears state institutions – from statistics-gathering services to public health networks to agricultural extension (Mundy et al. 2014: 155). In this context it is critical to remember that the state is not just the political baton protecting accumulation, nor is it the night watchman who oversees, organizes, and regulates the piling up of profit. Indeed, almost every state, no matter how shattered, gutted, or debilitated, is the crystallized socialization of past human labor. It is the enabler and guarantor of social reproduction. It is often the major employer. It is the owner of hospitals (Sen 2019), pharmacies, and the policy instrument for negotiating the prices of pharmaceuticals. It is the

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engineer of macroeconomic and fiscal policy. It plays an enormous role in human affairs and is very often the sole repository of collective human responsibility for well-being in the North and South alike. Furthermore, the state has two faces: as idea, and as an ensemble of institutions (Abrams 1988). As an idea the state can suggest a community of belonging in places where externally fostered sectarianism rips apart even the possibility of class-based solidarity. Furthermore, the idea of a welfare or developmental state can be the aspiration for a certain set of institutions. I am thinking of national healthcare systems in states that lack them or in which they are starved of funds, or the national production of medicines, or national and socialized support for decentralized popular agronomic research. Aspiring to such institutions does not imply any particular theory of political change other than the realist-pragmatist recognition that the state has been excellent at providing such services. At the ideological level, in the Arab region the state’s “mediatory role and responsibility to govern are ideas that may pull together shredded Arab societies” (Kadri 2015: 110). That is, the idea of a secular republic is actually a utopian horizon in such contexts, with a clear anti-systemic character that forces us to push back against ref lexive anti-statism, which, when placed in front of a chiaroscuro, insists only on seeing shadows. The history of radical Arab developmental thought is a lens through which we can reexamine the state, nationalism and internationalism, and the horizons and afterlives of national liberation. Precisely because such thought eff loresced almost purely as ideology, it remains an untrod path in the theory and practice of popular development. It also criticizes by now-overwhelming discourses that consider development merely a mask for accumulation, a socialcounterinsurgency operation, or something which the state inevitably warps and mangles.6 And precisely because it resolutely upheld the banner of a form of Arab nationalism while remaining attentive to how insufficient attention to social and democratic questions (internal nationalities and gender were not generally examined in this literature) had crippled its past bearers, it provides an excellent ground upon which to consider questions of sovereignty, nationalism, and the state. And because much of it was modeled on the historical experience of China, which is chock-full of lessons, it reminds us that neither nationalism nor state is so easily chucked into the waste bin. The chapter is structured as follows. It first reasserts that national liberation was less a failed than an aborted process. Its original vanguard theorists imagined it as a way to bring the national productive forces under sovereign and nationalpopular control, which led to sharp improvements in development indicators. It then grounds the discussion of national-popular development in the history of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Arab republics more broadly, illuminating the relationship between statist nationalism, pan-Arabism, the class basis of peripheral developmentalism, and the achievements and limits of national liberation. I then show how the national-democratic revolution in China was the basis for a sharp auto-critique of those models – less rejection than selective transcendence. I historicize that critique, clarifying that the condition of possibility

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for such thinking was national sovereignty itself. I then move on to the human costs of foreclosed or shattered sovereignty in the Arab world in the post-1991 period, as de-development’s umbra darkened not merely social outcomes but even the possibility to think liberation. Using this example, I reassert the relevance of nation, state, and sovereignty as the crystallized and socialized gains of the national liberation struggles that ought to be conceived of as the basis for a renewed struggle for social liberation rather than as a cage – or, if a cage, one that provides safety from predators more than confinement for prisoners. For material, I primarily draw on a set of articles by the leading Egyptian development economist, Ismail-Sabri Abdallah, and work from a conference on al-tanmīyya al-mustaqila, or independent development, hosted by the Center for Arab Unity Studies. This chapter is not quite a history of ideas and is only partially genealogical. Much more, it draws on the intellectual work of the past in order to illuminate a crucial cluster of ideas on Arab independent development and how they interlock with slightly earlier sub-Saharan African thinking about nation, national liberation, and sovereignty. The aim is to bring to light such thinking not merely as an exercise in intellectual history, but as a beacon that illuminates developmental dead-ends and paths to popular and independent development, the pitfalls and promises not merely of yesterday but also of tomorrow.

National liberation National liberation continues to receive a bad rap, perhaps in part because in some ways, it was never achieved. National liberation was never reducible to the veneer of formal state sovereignty. It was a vision partially dashed on the shoals of neocolonialism. But it was also a process. Guinea-Bissau’s Amilcar Cabral, arguably the most scintillating and sensitive thinker of national liberation, laid out how the far horizon of the restoration of the nation’s people to history was always within the sight of slices of such struggles for freedom. For Cabral, sovereignty was never about the paraphernalia of statehood but about restoring to the peoplenation the right to determine the “process of development of national productive forces” (Cabral 1979: 129–130).7 National productive forces included labor and the kinds of schooling people had and how that interacted with their engagement with the productive forces, as well as decisions over what to grow and when, where, and how to industrialize. Cabral did not conflate national and democratic liberation but rather suggested that severing the links that bound decisions about how to deploy the land and labor of a given colonized country from external domination allowed for a people to regain, or, in the words of Cabral, “Return to history” (130).8 In the process, “the victims of primitive accumulation [become] fully human, thereby closing the circle which began with imperialist partition and ideological dominance” (Moyo et al. 2013: 110). Cabral also cast this in uniquely precise terms. He equated national liberation with “national productive forces [being] completely free of all kinds of foreign domination” (Cabral 1979: 130).

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He was not alive to oversee postcolonial technological choices, macroeconomic management, or agrarian planning. Thus he could not have easily foreseen issues such as new dependencies born of technology transfer, although he certainly would have known that debt was equivalent to a priori claims on the fruit of national production and thus not merely an afterlife but a continuance of “foreign domination” through its claim on revenue streams and the continued enclosure of the actual labor and wealth of the land. Cabral brought nationalism and the national question to the fore, not as transhistorical romantic belonging or blood-and-soil organic communities but in material terms, a kind of parenthesis or parameter around a given set of productive forces and a way of reorganizing who was to benefit from them. He was obviously aware of how, under colonialism, the bounty of the land had constantly streamed outwards from colonized nations, with the soil and rain and labor not creating use value for domestic prosperity but exchange value for foreign capitalists who had taken hold of the colonized people’s historical process. Nationalism and national liberation were historical struggles to restore land to a given people, and if they were insufficient for tasks of socialist construction, they were absolutely necessary in order for any people (or collective that chose historically to become a people) to carry forward suitable forms of popular development. Cabral also made clear that national liberation was a description of a type of struggle that emerged against the specter of imperial accumulation. For him, national liberation was necessarily anti-imperialist. Latent in his formulation was the idea that national liberation was a tantalizing promissory note on a future freedom for a previously colonized population. Such a rupture set the terms within which such a people could exercise their right to choose how to develop their own productive forces. Such a right turned on the abrogation of the colonial system within which Guinea-Bissau, but more broadly Africa and Asia, had been raw commodity producers, exporting mineral and agricultural wealth to the North, and sites for monocrop plantation economies structured to complement the consumption and industrial sectors of the core states with attendant soil degradation, of which Cabral was well aware and which he saw as a socio-natural process that humankind had the power to stop (1954). In sum, decolonization was a partial but successful attempt to break the patterns of primitive accumulation, secured by colonial violence and manifest in ongoing colonial drain and unequal exchange, through which the core countries continued to extract wealth from the periphery. National liberation’s limited achievements were still achievements, something missed in chatter eager to assimilate one nationalism to the next, one set of capitalist contradictions to the next, and one passel of elites to their successors. National liberation very frequently stanched outf lows of value, which manifested socially as enormous human suffering. Gains for human dignity occurred because decolonization was seldom just about hoisting a f lag over an alabaster statehouse. While it has become increasingly common to suggest that decolonization left domestic, peripheral,

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macroeconomic structures largely intact, the postcolonial dependent states put a stop to colonial income def lation.9 Colonial famines ceased (Patnaik 2018). Investment in enhancing agricultural productivity by national governments was one of the harvests of decolonization, and it arrested and reversed secular declines in food-grain availability, and stopped deindustrialization (Destombes 2006, Patnaik 2007: 27–30, 128).10 Public health networks spread and per capita food-grain absorption gradually increased (Davis 2002, Hansen and Wattleworth 1978).11 This occurred by putting the “process of development of the productive forces” under the control of petty bourgeois elements that tended to the basic needs of the formerly colonized population – usually putting an end to absolute starvation and enfolding peasants into nationally secured and politically regulated social reproduction.12

National peripheral developmentalism in the Arab world The broad sweep of states that emerged in the formerly colonized world went to various lengths to turn national wealth to social well-being. The breadth, depth, and intensity of such experiments was not determined merely by the to and fro of domestic struggle. The new governments’ harnessing of popular will and energy and the state institutions toward popular development occurred amidst the Cold War, a US organizing schema for throttling, if not throwing back, such experiments (Amin 1983, Kolko 1986). Such endogenization was most often based on import-substitution industrialization. State elites broke the backs of the feudal bourgeoisie, setting in motion redistributive agrarian reforms that envisaged medium and large farmer paths to rural agrarian development and sometimes imagined more radical ruptures with rural inequality, as well. Their policies generally ref lected the vacillations of an emergent petty bourgeoisie, caught in the eddies and f lows of world-historical currents. In the Arab world, these were the children of Arab nationalist developmentalism during the belle epoque of 1952–1970 – still later in Algeria and Libya – whose temporality of decolonization was more in sync with the African continent than the slightly earlier decolonization of South Asia and the eastern Arab world (Mansour 1992). In Egypt under Nasser, pragmatism in macroeconomic management merged with a diffuse populist ethos, and internal redistribution and incorporation of “the people” into a group for whom the state was responsible.13 Sovereignty and redistribution went hand in hand with the nationalization of an industrial plant previously the property of colonists or the large bourgeoisie. In the most radical experiments in Syria, South Yemen, and to a lesser extent Algeria, explicitly Marxist ideologies informed these planning processes at their apex, leading in Syria, for example, to massive advances toward shattering the feudal landownership structure. More broadly, the Chinese and Soviet models exerted developmental pressure across the Arabophone arena and at the fringes of state planning well before Maoism began to mold the critique of state planning in the Arab republics (e.g., Younes 1964: 27–52).

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Arab nationalism also sought to go beyond the nation-state. In most of the Arab nationalist governments, and within Arab populations, unity was an alluring alternative political architecture (Higgins 2018). In this way, they would perhaps be able to crystallize sentiments of republicanism, new ideas of the people, new ways of imagining political belonging, and new ways to exit from developmental cul de sacs. Certainly, the ambition for unity predated the republics. Pan-Arab nationalism had long informed Arab state policies and interstate or popular solidarities. The Arab nation in its widest sense was partially constituted through and against colonialist intervention (Abu Nadi 2015, Behar 2001, Watanabe 2017). And national decolonization leaned on regional defeats of colonialism: Tunisian national liberation turned on a sequence of decolonization that rested on the Free Officer’s Coup in Egypt in 1952 and the slightly earlier decolonization in Libya, alongside nascent or explosive mass popular insurrection and guerrilla mobilization in Algeria, which equally f loated over scarcely annealed state borders (Ajl 2019a). Arab economic fusion had been mooted in theory in the 1950s – for example, in the Tunisian nationalist trade union’s (UGTT) “Economic and Social Report” (1956). Arab unity had taken form through Egyptian-Syrian unity in the United Arab Republic (Kerr 1971). Arab unity also took shape in the national liberation and decolonization period, through direct material support for wars of liberation, from Palestine to Tunisia to Algeria, or mass solidarity actions against colonial incursions. And Cairo and Algeria provided consistent support for sub-Saharan African liberation movements during this period, as well (Sharawy 2011a, 2011b). Furthermore, such ways of reimagining unity also came to imply new ways of imagining what it meant to be Palestinian, or Egyptian, or Algeria, in that support for national liberation or internationalist solidarity was conceived as inseparable from being, say, Algerian (El Nabolsy 2020). As Samir Amin observes, in Egypt these elements marked a “radicalization of national liberation” against the headwind of imperialist intrigue, but they were also marred by ambivalence and uncertainty, traits linked to the class orientation of the political project and its distance from more explicitly redistributive popular orientations that would have vested effective control of the society and its productive forces, its fields and factories, into the hands of the workers and fellahin (Amin 1990: 6, on the Syrian case, see Matar 2016: 9–19, 57–89). There was no place for popular participation in politics or decisions over production. The people were wards of the state (Ajl 2019b). Furthermore, Egypt like the rest of the Arab states never dealt fully with internal national questions, from the Nubians of Upper Egypt to the Iraqi and Syrian Kurds (Nakhal 2016), or gender oppressions (Kallander 2020). Additionally, capitalist elements were growing through deals with the state even during the heyday of Arab nationalist populism (El-Issawy 2010). External assault turned the tide in the Arab heartland in 1967, as Israel’s attack on the Arab states left the radicals “completely def lated”, in the words of the British Foreign Office (Cited in Mitchell 2011: 158). Amidst external assault, they slowly

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discarded all the calling cards of the Arab nationalist heyday, slowly shattering the links binding the domestic productive forces to domestic needs and relinking them to external and especially northern economies.

The auto-critique of Arab nationalism From 1967 onwards, two kinds of critiques emerged in response to this defeat – the naqsa or “setback”. These critiques did not reject the history of Arab radicalization or the socializing tendencies that had been present through the 1960s. They sought to transcend the problems of that period, taking what was good and tossing out what was not. In essence, their criticisms revolved around the role of the popular classes in actually existing Arab nationalist state politics and how the entire suite of decision-making and social base could lay the path for the peoples of the Arab region to walk to a different future. These critiques took issues with the class and technological bases of Arab developmentalism, including (at times) their contempt for and distance from the people upon whom development rested (Amrani 1979, Zamiti 1973). A parallel strand focused on the chasms between the leadership and the base, which deprived the leadership of its own pillars of support, structurally undermining it. A third critique focused on the risk of political and economic development falling into isolated national siloes, vulnerable and easy to topple. The move to self-reliance (al-iya’tamād ‘ala al-thati/al-iya’tamād ‘ala al-nafis), or, alternatively, independent development (al-tanmīyya al-mustaqila), another less precise term deployed to describe self-reliant development models, rested on three interlocking notions, each of which built on these earlier critiques. Each generally informed one another. Each manifested in different ways depending upon attitudes toward technology, environment, or the heritage of Marxist thought and practice. First was an increasing awareness of how any nation-state trying to escape from world-capitalist underdevelopment on its own could not possibly generate the needed escape velocity, especially when fueled and steered by anyone other than the popular classes. Reaching from reformists to radicals, such thinkers saw the need for some sort of rupture with the dream of co-dependent integration with a system of accumulation that sang lullabies of inclusion that merely lulled national leadership into the cul de sac of dependent development.14 They thought Arab nations had to support one another, if not move toward fusion. In that way, each bundle of national resources and each attempt to put in place technically tricky and economically risky industrial plants would not have to stand on their own as an all-in bet. They could compensate for one another’s shortfalls. They would pool resources and risks. Scale was central. Pioneering Arab development economists understood that the very size of the market could allow for complementarity between given factors of production and smooth out perturbations caused by planning errors and allow for sovereign industrialization through beneficial upward spirals of specialization rather than downward spirals

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of competition and redundancy. Joint enterprises would have politically secured markets, with reduced transportation costs, locking in value locally rather than hemorrhaging it outwards. Sufficient resources could be allotted to necessary and partially defensive heavy industrialization without unduly sapping the wealth of the popular classes. Second, the class basis of Arab unity deviated sharply from the Romantic nationalist period, wherein the nation was the chief imagined community, and class was an unruly and often unwelcome visitor. Marxism was an explicit touchstone rather than an antagonist or an embarrassing advisor, alternatively consulted and jailed, as some Marxists were under Arab nationalist planning. Poor people were the bricks to build up national blocs. Marxism was the joining. Rather than ill-fitting blocks of different and antagonistic classes joined by the poor-quality paste of pragmatism and Romanticism, the poor of the Arab world would compose an immensely strong economic, political, and social structure for building toward pan-Arab popular renaissance. Because such plans rested on increasing the well-being of exactly those poor people, questions of uneven development and exploitation intra-nationally or internationally would not arise. Correspondingly, the social base of popular development was likewise the social base of a political project of Arab unity or at least joint self-reliance. This was so because the “vested interest in division” did not extend to the “peasantry and proletariat”, in the words of Palestinian development economist Adel Samara (1986). Scale and capacity for complementary needed to address why previous attempts at unity had failed, if such failures had a class basis, and what would be the class basis for successful unity: this was the political intermediation of the process of self-reliant development. Third, political unity was not the output of radical development or socialism. It was its precondition. Unity was part of the national-democratic revolution and of Arab socialism (Murqus 1975: 182). These strands combined into a very different notion of what Arab socialism ought to be: it would overcome colonial-imperial fragmentation and shattering, and it would not err into attempting unity on false grounds, such as the EgyptianSyrian union wherein the former sought to industrialize at the expense of the latter (Heydemann 1999: 87–96). It would not accept self-interested blocking of unity. It would ground itself in the people. Against this background, the Chinese experience offered a compelling model and a blizzard of lessons for another development, one enriched by the lessons of the past and one that saw a radical break with what was bad in and of the past in the search for a different future.

Arab developmental thought in the light of China The prominent heterodox theories of development in the Arab world during the apex of postcolonial economic thought in the 1970s and 1980s were the product of several historical forces. They were above all rooted in the Arab experience of colonization and colonial and imperial subjugation and engorgement of their lands, mines, peoples, and trade f lows. They likewise clearly emerged from a long

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history of nationalist and pan-Arab struggle. But learning processes within the South and the long renaissance of the South had their place in affecting how such thought shifted. And furthermore, the atmosphere within which these modes of thought gestated was thick with hope and possibility well before local and global defeats would transform a possibility into an impossibility. In this heady context, the region’s most radical thinkers moved beyond a negative critique of earlier Arab nationalist economic development efforts to a positive plan for revolutionary reconstruction. China was the most potent fertilizer for this eff lorescence of thought. Even amidst post-1978 counterrevolutionary retreat, China had cleaved open and kept open massive world-systemic space for people to think about what development could be. The Arab approach toward self-reliance at multiple and interlocking scales, from the village to the nation-state, to the Arab nation, drew several lessons from the Chinese model. While Soviet models had beguiled earlier generations of planners, China’s success was distinct, in part because pre-1949 China was different from Tsarist Russia. The former had been subject to colonialism; the latter had not. The success of China showed that nations in the formerly colonized or Third World could develop. They were not fated to a future of stagnancy, decay, immiseration, or dependency. These thinkers focused above all on self-reliance. Such a call has a long history in non-Western and Marxist developmental thought. Its most proximate source, though, for Arab theories of development was the theory and practice of Mao Tse-Tsung, articulated most pithily in the statement that “We stand for self-reliance” (Tse-Tsung 1945: 241). Mao had put that principle into practice during the guerrilla war against the Japanese occupiers through maximizing local production of goods. Local did not merely mean within a given nation-state, or even a province; it meant devolving production down to the smallest possible unit. Such a cellular approach to development continued to mark China’s post-1949 efforts toward radical nationalist development. China also became an example by offering a schema for a statist developmentalism that catered to the needs of the population, not merely through redistribution or through the important steps of shattering the spine of the feudal aristocracy and creating new and more productive rural social layers. Most importantly, China had put peasants at the core of development theory, not merely in thought – as had radicals in the Nasser administration, within the 1966–1970 Syrian Ba’ath, or amidst peasant control of farming within cooperatives – but in a fresh synthesis of theory and practice. This new stage of development thinking, usually drawing on a heritage of Communist thought illuminated by the lessons of the Chinese experience and chastened by the limits of radical Arab nationalism, sought not to dismiss pan-Arabism or the state as a protective cocoon for popular development but to fix the f laws of the earlier attempts. China became a lodestar for Arab theories of development. It combined national and social liberation. It was a nationalist experience of development. It exemplified rapid industrialization in a poor and agrarian country. It linked

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technological mastery to the national project. It melted and remolded the economic and social structure, all the while tending to the basic needs of the popular classes. And it was rooted in the people (Fergany 1987: 300–316). The state was master coordinator of the entire economic production process. At the same time, it encouraged self-reliance not merely at the national level but at the sub-national and even village level, which in turn encouraged massive experimentation with enhancing traditional farming practices so as to maximize yield without having to truck in tremendously pricey inputs (Schmalzer 2016). China was not merely crucial for having successfully developed. It was critical for having done so in a way attentive to the distinct constraints of Third World development and for doing so on the heels of a war of national liberation. The national element enchanted a generation of Arab thinkers, activists, revolutionaries, and the broadest swathes of the people themselves who lived in a world pocked by colonial settlement and the experience of defeat. China, if not uniquely, then with unprecedented élan and effectiveness, had consummated its national liberation. Furthermore, it had emphasized that one had to delink (Amin, in Fergany 1987: 326–327). The model shattered the notion of technological neutrality and grasped at the idea of a more decentralized administration of society (Amin, in Fergany 1987: 327–328). Others emphasized that decision-making was truly independent, exemplifying a true alternative path (Adel Hussain, in Fergany 1987: 352–354). And still others pointed out that China had successfully stanched the outward f low of surpluses, the wound of colonial drain festering under postcolonial/neocolonial developmentalism alike (Khaled el-Manoubi, in Fergany 1987: 355). It was against the background of the Chinese achievements and blights and the lights and shadows of Nasserism and the United Arab Republic, that Arab developmental thought began to shift in important ways. It moved beyond even while building upon the nationalist heterodoxies that had been common coin before 1967 and laid bare the strengths and limits of national capitalist development for smaller states in the formerly colonized world.

Ismail-Sabri Abdallah and the echoes of China While ideas of delinking were common, and the importance of Maoism to Arab developmental thought was widespread, it is useful to hone in on an exemplary thinker, former Egyptian Minister of Planning and repeatedly jailed long-time Communist intellectual, Ismail-Sabri Abdallah, in part because of the degree to which he had been directly involved in Egyptian planning and had seen with his own eyes the many shadows and lights of that experiment in attempted socially oriented, nationalist-capitalist development.15 We see the heavy imprint of the Chinese experience in a set of three articles penned by Abdallah from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, time enough for the fruits of China’s successes to have ripened, and time enough for those interested in the details of macroeconomic

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development to be able to draw directly on analytical work detailing what China had accomplished. The first two, “Dépaysanisation Ou Développement Rural ? Un Choix Lourd de Conséquences” and “Arab Industrialization Strategy Based on SelfReliance and Satisfaction of Basic Needs”, appeared in that unknown treasure of Third World development planning, the dossiers of the International Forum for Development Alternatives. There, Abdallah detailed the appropriate strategies to be used amongst the peasantry and toward sovereign industrialization. The third, “Al-tanmīyya al-mustaqila: muḥāwala litaḥdīd maf hūm mujahal” (Independent Development: An Attempt to Define an Unknown Concept), appears in a conference volume of the Center for Arab Unity Studies entitled, Al-tanmīyya almustaqila fī al-waṭan al-‘arabī (Independent Development in the Arab Nation). I will take them chronologically. In the first, Abdallah called for development based on taking the rural village as the cellular structure for popular planning (1979: 11). He considered the peasantry to be more skilled than urban industrial laborers as they worked with the slowly accreted knowledge built up over centuries or millennia. During this time, the peasantry “acquired the art” of working not just with the land but with the entirety of the environment and its ecosystems. Because humans were central to agriculture, continuing and increasing agricultural production rested in “the last analysis on the motivations of the peasants” (12). On these grounds, he called first for an agrarian reform and second for taking the village as a unit for development. This would occur through economic diversification within the village itself. Those engaged in such diversification – teachers, masons, blacksmiths, carpenters, doctors – were or would be a part of the village community. Furthermore, such linkages would include the industrial processing of agricultural or biological material. They would turn human or animal waste into fertilizer, develop irrigation and drainage canals, maintain and repair tools and machines, carry out artisanal transformation of agricultural byproducts and the processing and storing of food products, and, finally, examine local traditional industries to see how they could be developed. Such a policy would have three goals: one, it would sponge up surplus labor. Two, it would enrich the village itself. Three, it would fortify the village as the “nucleus” for a national policy of “self-reliance”, freeing up the maximum amount of resources for heavy industrialization (13).16 The imprint of China is heavy here on multiple levels. First, the village community as the base community for development was a radical break from then-dominant patterns within development economics of rural-urban population transfers. It can also be described as a gestalt shift: whereas dominant patterns of economic planning in the Third World took the nation-state as an integrated unit within which goods would f low freely, the Chinese model and the Arab schemas slightly torqued that approach. While the nation-state was still central, a still more supple model would rest on maximizing self-reliance to the smallest molecular unit while holding onto the concept of a modern and socially interdependent economic structure. Second, they shifted to extolling

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the peasant as the subject rather than object of development planning. The third level of inspiration is taking the agronomic innovations and changes in practices enabled by cooperativization as the basis for investing labor to higher returns in production while focusing on an element of Mao-era agriculture underemphasized in the macroeconomic planning literature: a refined return to “traditional” farming practices. By taking the overwhelmingly rural Arab countryside as the basis for an organic buildup of use values from below, Abdallah sought to take the best of the Chinese experience and to use its lessons as the basis of a popular pan-Arab development strategy. His approach did not merely echo the Chinese model with lessons learned in the interim; it enhanced it: the ecological approach to development, building on a rising ecological consciousness in the development community, went beyond China’s pragmatist approach toward self-reliance and began to genuinely integrate ecological thinking into planning.17 The second article focused on rethinking: “Arab Industrialization Strategy Based on Self-Reliance and Satisfaction of Basic Needs” (Abdallah 1980). Abdallah did not mimic the USSR strategy of industrialization at all costs – substantially, a justified reaction to the threat of war on the USSR’s western f lank. Nor did he simply echo the much softer version of the policy that prevailed in China. Instead, in line with other Egyptian development economists of the era, he asked: industrialization to what end and for whom? It was a question that was part and parcel of a then-waxing concern amongst a range of North African economists, most especially Tunisia’s Azzam Mahjoub.18 Abdallah called for a strategy oriented to the “satisfaction of the needs of the broad majority” (Abdallah 1980: 9). Based on what the widest spectrum of the poor needed, one could then measure the “gap” and go on to “fill it” (10). Such a strategy was part and parcel of a broader strategy of industrialization, including producing capital goods or sector two. Furthermore, identifying needs would mean coordinating “industrial and agricultural growth” from the outset (10). Abdallah went on to argue that collective self-reliance could balance out lopsided distributions of resources and populations, the fruit of a long, natural, and social history, and allow for a large regional market. At the same time, such an approach would prevent internal developmental unevenness. He emphasized appropriate technologies and participatory planning, folding into the self-reliant model the late 1970s and early 1980s understandings of the perils of technology transfer and the associated notion that distinct technologies needed to be implanted for distinct patterns and priorities in the process of development. Once again Abdallah insisted on the same ensemble of techniques for self-reliant rural development. He also suggested industrial “inputs into agriculture” but noted that this should be accomplished as part and parcel of a maximally decentralized, rural industrialization strategy based on the scattering of small and medium strategies alongside the study of technologies called “traditional” (11). Furthermore, Abdallah severely questioned the large, industrial development strategy that had underpinned ISI-EOI maldevelopment. He praised the development of

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“handcrafts” for export and domestic use alike and sharply questioned the entire calculus of the economy of scale that justified breakneck industrialization as normative, adding that “modern industry should never equate with huge plants” and that the latter’s justifications stood “only when economic calculation is done on the micro-level and for the medium term” (12). Abdallah knew that certain kinds of consumption could damage the environment, and he was presciently aware of how such big plants could damage the physical environment, which he wished to protect (8, 12). Finally, Abdallah discussed that knotty problem of development: who would call the shots? Building on Mao, although with little attention to other internal contradictions amongst the poor peasantry, such as gender oppression, which Maoist thought had raised, Abdallah placed poor, rural people as the subjects of his theory of development, politically, socially, economically, and technologically. Although he recognized that history had placed people in prisons that needed to be dismantled, he insisted that once freed, the peasants could express themselves, “think of their future, take their destiny in hand” (Abdallah 1979: 15). This was not to lapse into a knee-jerk rejection of technocracy that spurned “outside” expertise but rather to form a dialogue between the helpers and helped when it came to technical coordination and support and to leave the power of decisionmaking with the peasants and their democratically chosen representatives. Here the development of the peasant herself was tied to production increases and each could only be achieved through deepening local democracy. He was aware, then, of how China’s oscillations between decentralization and centralization had not truly resolved the question of the political process of planning and where power would lie, and he sought to go beyond these problems by proposing a bottom-up democratic process (Fergany 1987: 314ff ). In the third article, Abdallah synthesizes earlier ref lections, dealing with national, social, and ecological questions and reaffirming the centrality of the nation to popular development. Abdallah called independent development a “natural extension” of national liberation and the national struggle to the realms of “economic and social liberation” based on “turning inwards” rather than leaving the national task languishing at the stage of achieving political sovereignty (Abdallah 1987: 36). He wrote that true “independent development” was essentially the battle to “complete national liberation” (47). This was to be based on national and appropriate technology and selective delinking, as well as Arab unity (37, 47). In this way, we come full circle to the organic sequencing between national and social liberation and how the former was not merely the precondition for the latter, but the latter was a way of completing former’s mission.

Conclusion: The loss of sovereignty and the loss of the future In April 1991, Marc Nerfin, a development economist and editor of the IFDA newsletter, tolled the bell for the dossier, stating that “today’s world bears little

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resemblance to that of 1978”. Amidst the “ruins,” Nerfin included “Iraq and the whole Arab community”, “the South as a whole, and the Non-Aligned Movement, marginalized beyond imagination”, as well as “the peace movement, incapable of mobilizing itself against a real North-South war” (Nerfin 1991: 2).19 Nerfin saw instantly that the inability to defend the postcolonial states would have immediate implications for knowledge production; one of these implications was a systemic loss of faith in the idea of alternatives (Ajl 2020b, 2018). There was a shift away from materialist social science, never mind utopian planning. Part and parcel of this process has been the erasure of the Arab world not merely as a site of knowledge production but as a site of knowledge production capable of speaking to popular-national development. As a consequence of the serial assaults that the Iraq War inaugurated, the region has seen massive dis-accumulation and de-development, even in the elusive terms of, for example, agricultural Gross Domestic Product. Since 1990, and even more so since 2000, we scarcely know what happened, let alone do we have the material upon which to imagine changes for the better, as amidst the midnight of developmentalism, states abandoned investment in statistical services and even social science altogether. Exterior agendas increasingly set the tempo and direction of research, evaporating Arab social theory as something emanating from internal needs and desires. Worse, amidst US wars, a great many regional states have lost their grasp on that great prize of decolonization: state sovereignty itself. Region-wide de-development reigns amidst de-industrialization and loss of agricultural capacity born of war, colonialism, and neoliberalism. Such facts cast into stark relief that paradigms that sidestep the state and national questions cannot account for key determinants of social change in the Arab region. Furthermore, the need for theories of development that pay heed to questions of state and nation while not allowing such questions to become fetters brightly illuminates the enduring centrality of the thinkers and the type of thinking treated in this chapter. These thinkers highlight the importance of recovering the national-popular smallholder path sketched out by regional intellectuals but scarcely walked upon within the region by planners. Resurrecting such intellectual labor is, finally, part and parcel of writing back against the erasure of the Arab world as a place where knowledge has been produced, an effort to which this chapter has been a small contribution.

Notes 1 Thanks to the editors and Zeyad El-Nabolsy and Ali Kadri for attentive comments. 2 Definitions of development are contentious. I find value in holding onto the term and understanding it as the process of changing “the socioeconomic so as to (re)build the productive forces to benefit the majority in various countries” (Valiani 2020: 156). 3 I am aware and sensitive to the historic questions that national or linguistic minorities within the Arab region have posed to Arab nationalism in theory and practice. Because this chapter is primarily focusing on the broad sweep of ideas about development and less their political implementation, I do not focus on those important questions.

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4 Working on this region, it becomes difficult to simply transpose justified criticisms of practices and categories like “development” when the region is, by any indicator, so clearly undergoing de-development. Nor can one simply accept criticisms of the role of the state when state institutions and the idea of a non-sectarian state are being systematically dismantled in the region. 5 Such shattering of the state and nationalism as a horizon of unity has also been active in the African context (Sharawy 2015: 193–194). 6 E.g., Fishwick and Selwyn (2016) advance a useful understanding of popular development that is reminiscent of some of what I chart below but that casts enormous and undue blame on the Latin American left states without accounting for the geoeconomic and geo-political constraints that hampered their capacity to change the relations of production. 7 Cabral was exceptional but not alone in this doctrine of economic nationalism focused on the reacquisition of control over the productive forces; it was the common vernacular post-Bandung, cf., (Nkrumah 1963: 29, 59ff ) who himself was criticized by Cabral for articulating the goal but with inadequate attention and theorization of the internal balance of forces that could block the march to that horizon (Cabral 1979: 114–118). 8 My italics. On Cabral and historical materialism, see (El Nabolsy 2019). 9 I take this formulation from (Mansour 1992: 113–114). 10 Such productivity-enhancing investments came with massive social and ecological costs, for example, India’s Green Revolution, on which, see (Sharma 2017) 11 Hansen and Wattleworth shy away from the obvious conclusion that the c. 1952 inf lection point in food-grain absorption coincides with the populist Free Officer’s movement in Egypt. 12 For this process in Tunisia, see (Ajl 2019a). 13 E.g., Reem Saad gives textured evidence showing the enormous and enduring popularity of the Nasser-era agrarian policies in Egypt (1998: 67–94). 14 From a radical nationalist but not communist or socialist perspective, consider (Sayigh 2002). 15 Within the pre-1967 Arab left especially, Maoism was a very small minority tendency, including under Nasser, aggravated by the Sino-Soviet split. However, at the level of developmental thought, Maoism had a larger inf luence, whether through figures like Samir Amin in the lower ranks of the Egyptian planning bureaucracy from 1957–1960 or through the very widespread awareness of China as a planning option amongst practicing planners and economists, which often went unmentioned due to the alliances between the Arab republics and the USSR. Thanks to Ali Kadri for clarifying my understanding on this point. 16 See also (Fergany 1987: 300). 17 I am grateful to Azzam Mahjoub for sharing with me how Abdallah had helped develop his own insights into ecology. 18 I consider some of that thought in (Ajl 2020a, 2019c). For an epistemological and programmatic statement on the need for alternative technology in the periphery, see (Mahjoub 1983). 19 His italics.

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Abdallah, I.-S., 1987. Al-Tanmīyya Al-Mustaqila: Muḥāwala Litaḥdīd Maf hūm Mujahal [Independent Development: an Attempt to Define an Unknown Concept]. In: Fergany, N. (Ed.), Al-Tanmīyya Al-Mustaqila Fi Al-Waṭan Al-‘Arabī [Independent Development in the Arab Nation]. Center for Arab Unity Studies, Beirut, 25–56. Abrams, P., 1988. Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State (1977). J. Hist. Sociol. 1(1), 58–89. Abu Nadi, S., 2015. Al-Tūnisiyūn w Al-Qadhīyya Al-Falasṭīnīyya Ḥata ‘Ām 1948 [The Tunisians and the Palestinian Cause until 1948]. Dār Ḥanīn Lilnashur w Al-Tawzīya. Ajl, M., 2018. Delinking, Food Sovereignty, and Populist Agronomy: Notes on an Intellectual History of the Peasant Path in the Global South. Rev. Afr. Polit. Econ. 45 (155), 64–84. Ajl, M., 2019a. Farmers, Fellaga, and Frenchmen (PhD). Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Ajl, M., 2019b. The Political Economy of Thermidor in Syria: National and International Dimensions. In: Matar, M and Kadri, A (Eds.). Syria: From National Independence to Proxy War. Springer, Cham, Switzlerland, 209–245. Ajl, M., 2019c. Auto-Centered Development and Indigenous Technics: Slaheddine El-Amami and Tunisian Delinking. J. Peasant Stud. 46(6), 1240–1263. Ajl, M., 2020a. Delinking’s Ecological Turn: The Hidden Legacy of Samir Amin. Rev. Afr. Pol. Econ. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2020.1837095. Ajl, M., 2020b. Does the Arab Region Have an Agrarian Question? J. Peasant Stud.. https ://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2020.1753706. Amin, S., 1983. The Future of Maoism. Monthly Review Press, New York. Amin, S., 1990. Maldevelopment: Anatomy of a Global Failure. United Nations University Press, Tokyo. Amrani, F., 1979. La réforme agraire (Dissertation). FDSE, Tunis. Behar, M., 2001. Nationalism at Its Edges: Arabized-Jews and the Unintended Consequences of Arab and Jewish Nationalism, 1917–1967 (PhD Thesis). Columbia University. Cabral, A.L., 1954. Para o conhecimento do problema da erosão do solo na Guiné. Bol. Cult. Guiné Port, 9(33), 163–193. Cabral, A., 1979. Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings of Amilcar Cabral. Monthly Review Press, New York. Cope, Z., 2019. The Wealth of (Some) Nations: Imperialism and the Mechanics of Value Transfer. Pluto Press, London. Davis, M., 2002. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World. Verso Books, London and New York. Destombes, J., 2006. From Long-Term Patterns of Seasonal Hunger to Changing Experiences of Everyday Poverty: Northeastern Ghana c. 1930–2000. J. Afr. Hist. 47(2), 181–205. El-Issawy, I., 2010. Oral History Interview of Ibrahim El-Issawy, http://dar.aucegypt.edu/ handle/10526/136. El Nabolsy, Z., 2019. Cabral’s Interpretation of Historical Materialism, ms. El Nabolsy, Z., 2020. Lotus and the Self-Representation of Afro-Asian Writers as the Vanguard of Modernity. Interventions, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2020 .1784021. Fergany, N., 1987. Min Al-Kitāb Al-Aḥmar Ila Al-Kitāb Al-Aṣfar: ‘Arḍ Tajruba Al-Ṣīn Al-Tanmūwīyya [From the Red Book to the Yellow Book: Presentation of the Chinese Development Experience]. In: Fergany, N. (Ed.), Al-Tanmīyya Al-Mustaqila Fi Al-Waṭan Al-‘Arabī [Independent Development in the Arab Nation]. Center for Arab Unity Studies, Beirut, 291–322.

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Neocosmos, M., 2016. Thinking Freedom in Africa: Toward a Theory of Emancipatory Politics. Wits University Press, Johannesburg. Nerfin, M., 1991. Editorial: to the Reader. In: IFDA Dossier. International Foundation for Development Alternatives, Nyon, 1–4. Nkrumah, K., 1963. Africa Must Unite. F.A. Praeger, New York. . Patnaik, P., 2020. The Uses of “Populism” [WWW Document]. Peoples Democr. https ://peoplesdemocracy.in/2020/0301_pd/uses-%E2%80%9Cpopulism%E2%80%9D (accessed 3.3.20). Patnaik, U., 2007. The Republic of Hunger and Other Essays. Merlin Press, Monmouth, Wales. Patnaik, U., 2018. Profit Inf lation, Keynes and the Holocaust in Bengal, 1943–1944. Econ. Polit. Wkly. 53, 33. Saad, R., 1998. Social History of an Agrarian Reform Community in Egypt, Cairo Papers in Social Science. American University in Cairo Press. Samara, A., 1986. Arab Nationalism, the Palestinian Struggle and an Economic Scenario for a Potential Arab Unity. Khamsin 12, https://libcom.org/library/arab-nationalism -palestinian-struggle-economic-scenario-potential-arab-unity-adel-samara. Sayigh, Y.A., 2002. Elusive Development: From Dependence to Self-Reliance in the Arab Region. Routledge, Milton Park, Abingdon. Schmalzer, S., 2016. Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Sen, K., 2019. The Political Economy of Public Health in Syria: Some Global and Regional Considerations. In: Matar, L., Kadri, A. (Eds.), From National Independence to Proxy, Syria War. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 185–207. Sharawy, H., 2011a. Memories on African Liberation (1956 - 1975) Part I [WWW Document]. Pambazuka. /pan-africanism/memories-african-liberation-1956-1975 (accessed 3.16.20). Sharawy, H., 2011b. Memories on African Liberation (1956 - 1975): Part 2 [WWW Document]. Pambazuka. /pan-africanism/memories-african-liberation-1956-1975-p art-2 (accessed 3.16.20). Sharawy, H., 2015. Political and Social Thought in Africa. Codesria, Dakar. Sharma, D., 2017. Techno-Politics, Agrarian Work and Resistance in Post-Green Revolution Punjab, India (Dissertation). Cornell University. Smith, J., 2016. Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis. Monthly Review Press, New York. Suwandi, I., 2019. Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism. Monthly Review Press, New York. Tse-tung, M., 1945. We Must Learn to Do Economic Work. In: Selected Works, Vol. III. Foreign Languages Press, Peking, China, 239–245. UGTT, 1956. Rapport Economique, 6eme Congres National, 20-23 September 1956. Valiani, Salimah, 2020. Sumak Kawsay beyond Latin America: A Proposal for Debate and Action in South Africa. Cuad. Econ. Crit. 6, 155–165. Watanabe, S., 2017. A Forgotten Mobilization: The Tunisian Volunteer Movement for Palestine in 1948. J. Econ. Soc. Hist. Orient 60(4), 488–523. https://doi.org/10.1163/1 5685209-12341428. Younes, Y., 1964. Note sur le Calcul Economique. Rev. Tunis. Sci. soc. 1, 27–52. Zamiti, K., 1973. Culture, idéologie de la modernité et obstacles au développement en Tunisie. Paris V, Paris.

8 REVOLUTION AND NATION BUILDING IN BURKINA FASO Ernest Harsch

In the early morning hours of New Year’s Day 2019, six armed men road motorcycles into the village of Yirgou, in Burkina Faso’s far north. They went to the home of the traditional chief and killed him, three sons, a brother, and several other residents. That incident was like many others in a persistent Islamist insurgency. One difference, however, was the reaction of some villagers. The Yirgou chief was from the Mossi, the country’s largest ethnic group. Witnesses reported that the attackers spoke Fulfuldé, the language of the Peulh (as Fulani are known in former French colonies across West Africa). For several days local vigilantes swept through Yirgou and surrounding areas, killing Peulh and burning their homes and farms. When the bloodletting ended, 49 Peulh were dead by an official count, perhaps as many as 200 according to Peulh associations. Several months later, the nearby town of Arbinda suffered similar bloodshed in which Mossi and Kouroumba vigilantes killed another 30 Peulh (L’Observateur Paalga, 14 January 2019, Le Monde, 4 April 2019, L’Observateur Paalga, 12–14 April 2019). In some African countries (Nigeria, Congo, Rwanda, etc.), mass killings targeting specific ethnic groups have not been uncommon. But in Burkina Faso they were rare. The massacres thus elicited national shock with condemnations coming from across the political spectrum along with outpourings of solidarity with the victims. Many asked: how could this have happened in Burkina Faso, a country reputed for its relatively amiable ethnic and religious relations? Clearly, many believed that national unity, regardless of one’s cultural identity, was worth preserving. As elsewhere, Burkina Faso’s cultural fabric has been woven through historical interactions. Some threads stretch back to the precolonial era; others were spun during more than half a century of French rule. Most recently, they could be traced to the mid-1980s, a period of intense nation building. In that era, a

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revolutionary government headed by President Thomas Sankara sought to enact major economic, social, and political reforms. Not least, Sankara’s radical leftist National Council of the Revolution (CNR) aimed for a cultural rebirth, to forge a new national identity that was both distinctly African and consciously panethnic. The change of the country’s name to Burkina Faso (from its old designation, Upper Volta) and that of its people from “Voltaïque” to “Burkinabè” were but the most symbolic expressions. Like nation builders elsewhere, the revolutionaries of the CNR set about constructing a veritable “imagined community” (Anderson 1991). Their direction was away from the vestiges of a subjugated former colony still beholden to the old metropole and toward a truly independent nation with a united, confident, and proud citizenry that looked to the future. Though imagined, this nation under construction was not artificial. It built on the ethnicities, languages, and religions of the inhabitants, with relations among them theoretically more equitable than before. The new identity, in turn, was not expressed in strictly cultural terms. It was part of a process of social advancement more generally – of the poor against the elites of all ethnic groups, of subordinate social castes against former oppressors, and of women and youth against patriarchal elders who previously monopolized local authority. Moreover, the new outlook included strong pan-Africanist and internationalist features of solidarity with oppressed peoples elsewhere in Africa and around the world.

A colonial construct When in the late-nineteenth-century European colonial powers moved more systematically than before to carve up Africa, they sought to justify their conquests with verbal professions about advancing civilization, social progress, and modernity. They did not, however, try to implant their own standard nation-state model, developed over centuries of contestation and bargaining between Europe’s rulers and their citizens. Africans were not considered citizens but subjects. The state structures imposed over subjugated African societies were fundamentally external, designed to serve the geopolitical and economic interests of the metropolitan powers. The specific forms of local colonial systems varied greatly, depending on the proclivities of the colonial metropole, the number of European settlers, the degree and nature of indigenous resistance or collaboration, the resilience of prior African polities, and the particular ethnic and religious communities that were incorporated within the colonies’ new territorial boundaries. Whatever the variations, they all ref lected models of “alien bureaucratic autocracy” that wielded an “exclusionary hegemony” over Africans (Young 1994: 180, 218). The administration of that hegemony was often exercised directly only in the major towns, given the limited number of available expatriate personnel and the difficult topographies and uneven population distributions of outlying areas (Herbst 2000). For the most part, countrysides were governed through variants of decentralized “indirect rule” in which traditional chiefs

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allied with the colonizers were accorded extensive powers over their subjects to collect taxes, labor, and other services. The colonial states, meanwhile, delineated the peoples of these largely multiethnic societies along idealized tribal lines and managed them separately through codified “customs” and laws that served to slow the development of common identities (Mamdani 1996). The cultural repercussions of colonial rule were contradictory: on the one hand, disparate peoples were assembled within wider territorial entities, providing a framework for the later emergence of potent anti-colonial nationalist movements. On the other hand, the emphasis on ethnic and/or religious difference encouraged countervailing local orientations that persisted beyond the colonial era, providing openings for political entrepreneurs to manipulate and instrumentalize particularistic identities for their own ends, often worsening internecine competition and sowing the seeds of civil conf lict (Young 1994: 236). The French colony named Upper Volta was rather typical. It brought some 60 ethnic groups under the same state system. Many comprised small minorities. But one people, the Mossi, occupied much of the central plateau and accounted for nearly half the population. On the eve of colonization, the Mossi also had a relatively structured polity, much of it governed by a hierarchical chieftaincy system headed by an emperor (Mogho Naaba) in Ouagadougou, although with several semi-autonomous kingdoms (Beucher 2010). There were many other peoples too. Before the conquest, parts of the northeast were ruled by Liptako, a theocratic Islamic emirate of the Peulh. To the west and south were the chiefless Lobi, Dagari, Birifor, Oulé, and other small communities, while much of the east was inhabited by Gourmantché, some of whom had chiefs with limited powers. The Jula were a Muslim trading people scattered throughout much of the west. While the Mossi stood out for their system of political chiefs beholden to royal courts, they, like several other peoples, also had semi-autonomous local land chiefs who oversaw land allocations and mediated disputes within village communities. The first French military expeditions targeted the Mossi empire, culminating in the defeat of its army and the capture of Ouagadougou in 1896. When the emperor himself refused to surrender, the French commander enthroned his brother and proclaimed a “protectorate” over the Mossi (Pacéré 1981). However, stiff resistance to the French conquest continued for several more years among the Bobo, Samo, Lobi, Gourounsi, Gourmantché, Tuareg, and others. Most dramatically, in 1915–1916 a major revolt erupted among the Bwa, Marka, and other peoples of the west, who assembled a multiethnic army of some 90,000 that initially beat back the French forces. Only additional reinforcements and the slaughter of some 23,000 insurgents and supporters eventually ended the revolt (Saul and Royer 2001). In 1919, the French formally established the colony they called HauteVolta, after the upper tributary of the southward-f lowing Volta River. It was an ambiguous enterprise. Located far from the coasts, with part of its territory

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Main ethnic groups in Burkina Faso. Source:“Burkina Faso: A History of Power, Protest, and Revolution”, Ernest Harsch, 2017, Zed Books, used by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

too arid for agriculture and with few easily exploitable natural resources, the colony was largely viewed by the French authorities as a labor reserve. Even during World War I, they conscripted many young men, mostly Mossi, to fight with the French army. They then perpetuated the pattern by forcibly recruiting many thousands to work on plantations or infrastructure projects elsewhere in West Africa. In administering the colony, the authorities first tried to disregard the Mossi chiefs, in line with their justification at the time that the French role in subSaharan Africa was to sweep away “feudal” structures and replace them with modern, bureaucratic institutions. Upper Volta, however, was the most populous territory in French West Africa, and there were very few French administrators or trained African functionaries to ensure effective control. Bypassing the chiefs proved infeasible, and the policy was abandoned. As André de Beauminy, a French administrator in Ouagadougou, commented in 1919, During the past few years we have restored power and prestige to the Mogho Naba and to his vassals, the Mossi chiefs … The rulers are now helping us to restore, on a newer and sounder basis, a political edifice which had once appeared to be on the point of collapse. (Skinner 1964: 162)

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Among those indigenous societies that had no chiefs or chiefs with only limited authority, French commanders often created chieftaincies from scratch. But their task was easiest in Mossi areas, where colonial directives could be readily transmitted through the Mogho Naaba or other royals on downward to the villages. Although “Upper Volta” was a technically neutral name drawn from a geographical feature and not any specific ethnic group, the colonial reliance on the Mossi chiefs translated into de facto favoritism toward Mossi society. Not only were the Mossi especially numerous, but “their central geographical location within the new entity confirmed their preeminent place, as a consequence relegating the Peulh, Tuareg, Gourmantché, Bissa, Gourounsi, Lobi, Dagara, Bobo, Jula, or Marka to both minority and peripheral status” (Beucher 2009: 21). That Mossi position fostered some resentment among other ethnic elites, but tensions were largely latent, with little overt conf lict. The seeming Mossi hegemony was also softened by a tendency to ally, assimilate, and intermarry with members of other ethnic groups. Ethnic identities, moreover, were somewhat variable and could shift over time. When local disputes did bring violence, a variety of traditional mediation mechanisms often defused them before they escalated further (Hagberg 2001). In addition, ethnic affiliation generally did not coincide with religious adherence, which differed across and within ethnic groups. The Mossi themselves were found almost equally among Christians, Muslims, and followers of traditional beliefs (Hart 2014). That too contributed to blurring cultural identities. For several decades, the political power of the Mossi chiefs was reinforced by their connection with the colonial order. But eventually wider changes in the French empire weakened those links and checked Mossi aspirations for supremacy. In 1932 Paris unexpectedly decided to simply abolish Upper Volta as a separate colony, to the Mossi chiefs’ great shock. The biggest portion of Upper Volta, in both territory and population, was incorporated directly into Côte d’Ivoire. The circles of Ouahigouya and a small part of Dédougou joined Soudan (Mali), thus splitting the old Mossi heartland. To the east and north, Gourma and Liptako were attached to Niger. The reasons for the fragmentation were essentially economic: redrawing the colonial borders not only cut administrative costs but also made Voltaic workers even more available to other French colonies. The Mossi chiefs, despite feeling betrayed, continued to collect taxes and recruit labor and troops for the French empire, hoping to convince Paris that their loyalty should be rewarded with a reconstitution of Upper Volta’s previous borders and status. That in fact happened in 1947. But the restitution had less to do with rewarding the Mossi chiefs than serving wider French political considerations. In the wake of World War II, anti-colonial agitation was starting to develop, including in Côte d’Ivoire, where radical nationalists had gained wide followings. Reconstituting Upper Volta enabled Paris to set the conservative Mossi chiefs against those Ivorian nationalists to blunt their regional inf luence. Although the

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chiefs had expected to regain their previous status, they found themselves less central to colonial affairs. Paris was then enacting broader changes in its empire, including abolition of forced labor laws, opening greater political space to parties and unions, and introducing limited representative institutions. While nationalist politics elicited only muted echoes in Upper Volta at the time, the formation of parties and organization of elections to territorial and regional assemblies did bring some stirrings. Notably, those were initially led by Ouezzain Coulibaly (a Bobo) and other figures from the non-Mossi west, although soon political formations also arose among younger Mossi keen to assert their independence from the chiefs. Nevertheless, when French President Charles de Gaulle called a referendum in 1958 in which voters in the various territories were able to choose whether they would remain within the “French community” or acquire independent statehood, all but a tiny fraction of the small electorate in Upper Volta chose the former (as did majorities in all the other territories, except Guinea, which opted for independence). Shortly after, Upper Volta was rocked by a dramatic clash between its f ledgling republican institutions and the waning power of the Mossi chiefs. Following the unexpected death of Coulibaly, the territorial assembly selected Maurice Yaméogo as prime minister. Although a Mossi, Yaméogo was sharply critical of the chiefs. In reaction, Mogho Naaba Kougri, who had only recently ascended to the throne, proposed the formation of a union government, presumably with chief ly representation. The assembly’s elected deputies ignored him. Then the emperor, dressed in war regalia, led 3,000 mounted warriors to surround the assembly building. The French army supported the deputies and dispersed the Mogho Naaba’s fighters. That humiliating outcome symbolized the end of the Mossi aristocracy’s overt political authority (Skinner 1964: 199–201). Meanwhile, the French government was itself moving toward ending direct control. In December 1959 de Gaulle unilaterally announced that territories within the Franco-African Community could accede to formal independence without losing French assistance. Under that French impetus, Upper Volta gained sovereignty on August 5, 1960, with Yaméogo as president. Although in conf lict with the Mossi aristocracy, Yaméogo was no radical. His regime was highly corrupt and repressive, and soon succeeded in alienating both ordinary people and the elites. When he tried to impose a severe austerity program, the well-organized trade unions, with support from radical students and much of the population, unleashed an insurrection that abruptly brought down his regime in January 1966 (Guirma 1991). General Sangoulé Lamizana, the most senior army officer, took over and governed for the next decade and a half. He was a Samo, a small western ethnic group. When he in turn was ousted in a coup in 1980, Colonel Saye Zerbo, another Samo, became president. The Lamizana and Zerbo regimes appointed ministers and other high officials of various ethnicities. Mossi figured prominently, thanks to their demographic weight, educational levels, and concentration around the capital. But Gourounsi, Peulh, Gourma, and most other ethnic groups were also

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represented, sometimes even above their proportion in the population (Charles 1999). Most governments, including those led by Mossi, consciously sought a degree of multiethnic inclusion (Englebert 1996: 119–126). According to one researcher, this made Burkina Faso somewhat exceptional. “It would appear to be one of the very rare, if not the only, West African state in which a majority ethnic group, comprising half the country’s population, did not try to monopolize the basic levers of the various state institutions” (Charles 1999: 1099). There were disparities, nonetheless, ref lected more in geographic than ethnic terms. Some regions, mainly in the west or peripheral areas of the north and east, were somewhat neglected by the central authorities when it came to infrastructure or other development projects. But ethnic competition as such was rarely a notable political factor. That did not mean that the state was inclusive, however. The system of ethnic balancing operated mainly among the elites. Most inhabitants had little direct contact with the central state and in practical terms were unable to function as full citizens. In periods when representative elections were held, only voters in the main cities had some choice among the elite parties. Rural voters were overwhelmingly obliged to cast their ballots according to the party allegiances of their local chiefs, Mossi or other.

A revolution for all In 1983 Upper Volta experienced the beginning of a profound upheaval, a revolutionary era led by a coalition of radical officers, former student activists, trade unionists, and figures from the country’s tiny underground Marxist parties. As in most revolutions, the contributing elements were multiple. Some ref lected the country’s deep structural f laws and tensions. Others resulted from more immediate precipitating factors. I have examined those in depth elsewhere (Harsch 2014 and 2017). Upper Volta was one of the poorest countries in Africa. The vast bulk of the population lived in the countryside and engaged largely in subsistence farming or livestock herding. When the rains failed, as they often did, many rural children, elderly, or infirm perished. Cities and towns were small, and only some betteroff urban residents had access to formal education or health care. Meanwhile, those in high office, whether military or civilian, routinely used their positions for corrupt or fraudulent ends. Political and economic ties to France remained especially close, and rarely did authorities express positions that might irritate Paris. The resulting tensions translated into political instability. General Lamizana was successful for a time in using patronage to co-opt challengers, but his ouster in 1980 opened a succession of coups. In 1982 an unstable conglomerate military regime came to power, with senior rightist officers on one side and younger radicals allied with leftist students, unionists, and political groups on the other. The latter were strong enough to get their main leader named prime minister: Captain Thomas Sankara. When Sankara used his position to mobilize people

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behind radical reforms and against imperialist domination, the French authorities encouraged the rightists to arrest him. That move provoked wide protests and only strengthened the radicals’ following. On 4 August 1983, they seized power. In part, the military component of that takeover gave it the hallmarks of a revolution from above, but the process also came to entail considerable popular mobilization, including from among the poorest social strata. The new National Council of the Revolution (CNR) vowed to fight “foreign domination and neocolonialism”, and called on everyone, “men and women, young and old” to organize and mobilize in support of the revolutionary process (Sankara 2007: 66–67). The CNR and its government had many military members but also included figures from several leftist political groups and other civilian activists. Most were relatively young and of modest social backgrounds. The CNR ref lected the country’s diversity, with numerous Mossi, but also Bobo, Gourounsi, Peulh, and others. Sankara himself was from a marginal sub-group known as the Silmi-Mossi, of mixed Mossi and Peulh ancestry, generally viewed as being of low social status by traditional Mossi and Peulh chiefs. True to its revolutionary ambitions, the CNR set about overhauling the judiciary, military, and other state institutions. Corruption and high living were attacked, and public trials jailed scores of dignitaries for embezzlement and fraud. Government ministers’ salaries were cut, and their limousines taken away. To further expand popular involvement, the leadership encouraged citizens to form thousands of Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), whose leaders were directly elected by neighborhood and village residents. The CDRs spearheaded collective labor mobilizations that cleaned public spaces, graveled roads, and built hundreds of irrigation dams, schools, health clinics, community centers, and other facilities. The central budget, which previously favored betteroff urban residents, was reoriented toward serving the rural poor, including inputs for small-scale farmers and services for villagers. At a time in Africa when very few women reached high political or administrative positions, the CNR appointed a number as judges, provincial high commissioners, state enterprise directors, and about a fifth of cabinet ministers. Specific programs sought to advance women’s standing more generally: literacy classes, maternity training, and strengthening women’s cooperatives and market associations. A new family code set a minimum age for marriage, established divorce by mutual consent, recognized a widow’s right to inherit, and suppressed the bride-price. Public campaigns combated female genital mutilation, forced marriage, and polygamy.

Unity in diversity Throughout the CNR’s brief four years in power, the dominant political language shaping domestic policy was that of class, generally of the poor against society’s tiny handful of privileged. Sankara and his colleagues only occasionally referenced ethnic distinctions in the context of their efforts to rebuild their

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nation on a broader, more inclusive basis. In his “political orientation speech” of October 1983, the most comprehensive ideological explanation of the revolution’s overall direction and goals, Sankara declared: One of the CNR’s essential concerns is to unite the different nationalities that exist in Upper Volta in the common struggle against our revolution’s enemies. There are indeed in our country a multitude of ethnic groups that differ from each other by language and customs. The Voltaic nation consists of the totality of these nationalities. Imperialism, through its policy of divide and rule, strove to exacerbate the contradictions among them, to set one against the other. The CNR’s policy aims to unite these different nationalities so that they live on an equal basis and enjoy equal opportunities for success. (Sankara 2007: 107–108) Toward that end, he said, the CNR would promote the development of the different regions, encourage economic exchange among them, combat ethnic prejudices, and punish those who tried to foment divisions. These were not separate undertakings, relegated to the cultural sphere, but seen as an integral part of the leadership’s wider revolutionary project, including reform of the state apparatus. The CNR consciously used its control of the central state to try to forge a common overarching Burkinabè national identity, reshape citizens’ views of their relationship to the state, and still leave considerable latitude for the interaction of local ethnic and religious identities, as long as none tried to dominate another. The dual processes of fashioning that identity and restructuring the old state apparatus entailed dramatically expanding the state’s territorial authority, which had been exceptionally limited even on a continent of many weak states. It simultaneously sought to directly link the state to many more citizens, especially those previously on the periphery, whether because of their geographical location or ethnic or social affinity. From the perspective of the political authorities, reforming the state and its institutions would enable them to penetrate society much more deeply. But that was not a one-way process. Over the long term, state expansion would lead more people to view themselves as citizens and ultimately to either press their claims through state channels or, if necessary, act beyond the control of those at the top ( Johnston 2011). To deepen the state’s reach in rural areas, the CNR worked along several tracks. One sought to remove the higher-level political chiefs as intermediaries between the state and the population. In December 1983 a presidential decree abolished all laws pertaining to the designation of chiefs, the specification of their territorial jurisdictions and “payments, gratuities, and other benefits of the traditional chiefs” (Africa, September 1984; West Africa, 5 March 1984). That meant that chiefs no longer had any rights of taxation, could not collect tribute or demand labor services, and lost the state stipends they had received since colonial times. At least in law, chiefs no longer constituted a parallel administration in the

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countryside. Their functions were henceforth to be assumed by state-appointed prefects, elected defense committees, and various village and farmers associations. The CNR also initiated a process of decentralizing aspects of the state administration. Previously, there were only a few departments to manage all government affairs in rural areas, increasing from four in 1963 to 11 by 1979. Abruptly accelerating that process, the CNR decreed a series of measures in November 1983 to introduce many more local entities. Four types of territorial division were instituted: village, commune, department, and province. At the highest level, the provinces took the place of the old departments but were significantly smaller, their boundaries determined partly by population density to ensure better administrative coverage. By August 1984 there were 30 provinces (Kambou 1988). Most dramatically in terms of projecting a new national identity, the CNR decided on the first anniversary of its takeover to rename the country Burkina Faso. Roughly translated as “Land of the Upright People”, the name is a multilingual composite: burkina from Mooré, the language of the Mossi, meaning “worthy people” or “men of dignity” and faso from Jula, signifying, among other definitions, “house” or “republic”. The “bè” suffix in Burkinabè came from Fulfuldé, the language of the Peulh. The new name sought to convey a stronger national identity in two symbolic ways: first, it was local and African, as against an artificial construct (“Haute-Volta”) taken from the colonial language. Second, it was explicitly pan-ethnic and pan-territorial, since it drew from – and proudly projected – the country’s multiple, polyglot cultures. That same year came a new f lag and a new national anthem, Di-Taa-Niyè, a phrase from the Lobiri language meaning “song of victory” (Conseil national de la transition 2015: 37). As is typical of anthems, Di-Taa-Niyè appealed to patriotism. Ref lecting its revolutionary impetus, it also explicitly rejected oppression, neocolonialism, and the exploitation of man by man and extoled democracy and liberty. One verse proclaimed that Burkina Faso had finally become a land “where national identity has the right to be free” (Sidwaya, 17 December 1986). Although the anthem bears an African name, it was originally composed in French but soon translated into a dozen indigenous languages (L’Evènement, 10 October 2007). Widespread use of those languages faced great difficulties, however. Not only were the colonial authorities disinterested in the languages spoken by their subjects, but their official educational policy promoted French as the exclusive language of instruction. Little changed after independence. French remained the only language of formal education, as well as the sole official language. Not until 1978 did the constitution even mention the possibility that national languages might one day acquire an official status. Only in the 1970s did systematic academic research begin into about a dozen of the languages, so their written forms were little developed (Nikiema 1999). The revolutionaries of the CNR greatly expanded formal education and built hundreds of new schools in large and small towns alike. But it was simply not possible to switch to instruction in African languages, even at the primary level,

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given the absence of written materials. Beyond expediency, there were two other reasons for retaining French: first, French is a major world language, providing access to international communication and scientific and literary knowledge from around the globe. Second, since none of the African languages was known by everyone, and the most widespread language was associated with the traditionally dominant ethnic group, French could function as a “neutral” lingua franca. Sankara stated that while French might be “the unifying language of all our nationalities … [t]hat doesn’t mean that our national languages will be rejected, far from it” (Sankara 2007: 247). While the possibility of written communication in the national languages was limited, more opportunities were available through the broadcast media. News and cultural shows on the country’s sole television station were no longer delivered only in French but also in Mooré and occasionally other languages. Radio remained the main means of mass communication, reaching far beyond the larger towns and into the provinces. The national radio network regularly broadcast in 11 indigenous languages (Mooré, Jula, Fulfuldé, San, Nuni, Liélé, Gulimacema, Lobiri, Dagara, Bissa, and Bwa), in addition to French. Other forms of communication also provided scope for greater use of African languages. Major political rallies, professional conferences, and other events were frequently accompanied by varied local dance and musical performances, giving audiences a glimpse of their nation’s diverse cultures. At a festival in the southwestern town Gaoua, artists and writers from different ethnic groups competed for prizes. Among the writers, there were winners for works in French, Mooré, Jula, and Fulfuldé. A jury declaration noted that, while individual works were in competition, it was not the case for the cultures themselves: “Each culture has its own value. This festival is an occasion for our different nationalities to discover themselves, to make themselves known, and to mutually enrich themselves, for the birth of a genuinely national culture” (Carrefour africain, 29 December 1984). Perhaps the most ambitious effort to promote the languages’ written forms was a national literacy campaign in 1986. It had a dual purpose: to teach literacy and to specifically empower members of peasant associations to play more effective leadership roles. Some 30,000 villagers were taught entirely in nine selected indigenous languages. Despite many logistical problems, about half managed to acquire functional literacy. So that those newly literate would not lose what they had gained, the authorities encouraged the production of more educational texts, journals, and bulletins in the languages. The Ministry of Peasant Affairs, responsible for helping villagers organize themselves, also set out to develop follow-up courses (Harsch 1987). As the head of the ministry noted, “A language dies when it’s not used” (Compaoré 1987).

Socio-ethnic fault-lines Most of the programs and policies of Sankara’s revolutionary council followed social and political criteria and were not explicitly enacted with ethnicity in

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mind. Nevertheless, those initiatives were sometimes controversial and had impacts that varied by population sector. The resulting tensions were occasionally ref lected through the lens of ethnicity but usually only at the local level. With the advent of the revolution, numerous forms of rural hierarchy came under question, most obviously with male and female youths challenging the previous dominance of chiefs and elders. Lower castes or those of other subordinate status found new opportunities to assert themselves. Silmi-Mossi, for example, were able to step into positions of responsibility within the revolutionary defense committees that were denied them in both traditional Mossi and Peulh societies. That the head of state was himself Silmi-Mossi gave them a certain psychological boost. Similarly, among the semi-nomadic Peulh of the Liptako region, the lower-ranking Rimaïbé (a category originally descended from war captives, slaves, and vassals) were “very satisfied with the revolution of Sankara”, in part because they saw a chance to advance their standing against the aristocratic Rimbé (Bovin 1990: 35). Among the Mossi and Peulh aristocracies, the revolution was resented for encouraging both commoners and previously subordinate ethnic and caste groups. Their resistance impeded efforts for rural change. An agrarian reform proclaimed in 1984 initially stripped chiefs of their powers to allocate land but failed to distinguish the political chiefs, who had been especially authoritative among the Mossi, from the local land chiefs who were most involved in day-to-day village affairs. The exclusion of the latter caused problems. Since new, alternative land management structures were not yet in place and few land-use maps were available, implementation of the agrarian reform bogged down without village chiefs’ detailed knowledge of existing tenure rights. When plans for new land management commissions were finally drafted in 1987, the authorities shifted course by seeking to engage those local land chiefs, in effect wedding the chiefs’ “indigenous knowledge” to the modernist visions of the state. Things were also complicated in the west and south, historically dominated by Bobo, Samo, and other non-Mossi peoples. As many Mossi settlers migrated to those more fertile areas from the drought-prone central plateau, they joined the CDRs in large numbers, viewing them as vehicles for securing land rights. That brought them into conf lict with Bobo chiefs, who generally favored ancestral land claimants over newcomers (Tallet 1985: 65–67). Also in the west, many merchants were either Jula or Yarse, a Muslim, Mooréspeaking group. The government’s sharp criticisms of traders sometimes led overzealous defense committee activists to dismiss them with sweeping ethnic characterizations. Whether in Mossi-populated territories or elsewhere, the CDRs tended to favor settled agriculturalists over nomadic livestock herders. Farmer-herder conf licts had been long-standing but intensified after the serious droughts of the 1970s and early 1980s, which pushed more herders southward as their traditional pasturelands lost vegetation. Since most defense committees were conceived as fixed geographical entities, they were ill-suited for incorporating

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semi-nomadic herders, many of whom were Peulh and also less inclined to identify with the state. The particular concerns of Peulh herders were thus not well considered when the CNR launched a major environmental conservation campaign. One component sought to limit damage to farms by better controlling unsupervised cattle grazing. To enforce compliance, CDRs were authorized to shoot cattle trampling crops and to seize unattended cattle, which would be returned to their owners only upon payment of a fine (Sidwaya, 11 November 1985). In some areas CDR members – who came overwhelmingly from farming families – took things to an extreme. They shot cattle that were accompanied by their owners and that were not even damaging crops. In Sissili province, more than 100 cattle were arbitrarily shot in a period of two months, and three herders were killed while trying to protect their animals. Local press investigations revealed that “such exactions took place to some extent throughout the country, leaving herders and their cattle completely insecure. To save their animals and their own heads, many herders crossed the borders into neighboring countries”. It was estimated that half the herders in Sissili f led (Carrefour africain, 30 May 1986). A national CDR conference bluntly characterized the campaign as a failure. With understated irony, it noted that “the systematic slaughter of animals did not have the support of the rural world” (Secrétariat général national des CDR 1986: 61). The authorities subsequently sought to ease farmer-herder conf licts by more clearly zoning village lands according to three kinds of use, for farming, herding, and residency, as part of the agrarian reform implementation. While such conf licts sometimes took on ethnic colorations, they were essentially socio-economic, stemming from occupational activities or disputes over resources. Their scope, moreover, was overwhelmingly local and thus did not seriously impede the new identity that was emerging at the national level.

In comparative perspective Before turning to the legacy of the CNR’s nation building efforts, it may be useful to step aside to brief ly situate the case of Burkina Faso within the wider field of state and nation. From the emergence of the prevalent model of the modern nation state in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, two broad patterns have been identified. In France and Britain (the most prominent examples) central states essentially created nations through processes of economic and administrative integration and the establishment of cultural hegemony over the various peoples within their borders. In Central and Eastern Europe, by contrast, nations within wider multinational empires broke away to found distinct states of their own. “In Europe, states established nations and nations established states”, commented Neuberger. In Africa, he continued, most independent countries followed the first course, with a “nation-building process initiated by the state, within the state, and for the state” (1994: 233).

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Most African leaders – from avowed anti-imperialist revolutionaries to political conservatives – adopted some form of nationalist ideology and sought to build European-style nation states. But given the great cultural diversity of the societies they governed, their “nations” would long remain largely aspirational. And partly for that reason, there was much variation in how they approached their goal. A handful of countries had only one major or dominant group, and their leaders usually chose to build on that hegemony. A few (including Nigeria and Ethiopia) had several major ethnic groups whose leaders had long been in sharp conf lict with each other, and federative solutions were attempted to try to manage the competition. Most countries fell somewhere in between, with relations among ethnic groups often mediated through patronage arrangements among the elites. Those understandings sometimes proved tenuous, however. When patronage resources declined or one group succeeded in monopolizing power, the losers at times resorted to dangerous ethno-nationalist challenges. Burkina Faso, as we have seen, featured one large ethnic group and many smaller ones. Historically, some Mossi elites exhibited hegemonic aspirations, but countervailing social interactions and political constraints prevented them from going so far as to provoke severe conf lict. Thus when revolutionaries came to power, they had an easier time in reconfiguring the components of their new Burkinabè identity than they would have in a country emerging from mass bloodshed and ethnic warfare. Ethnic engineering as such did not have to be a dominant element of their nation building project, although it did require some skill in elevating the status of previously marginalized groups without provoking a Mossi backlash. They were able, for the most part, to simply emphasize the inclusion and equality of all Burkinabè citizens as part of the wider process of political and social change. In that sense, Sankara and his comrades followed one of the core conceptions of the American, Dutch, and French revolutionaries of earlier centuries. As Hobsbawm, in his celebrated book on nationalism, observed, such revolutionary pioneers thought of patriots as those who showed the love of their country by wishing to renew it by reform or revolution. And the patrie to which their loyalty lay, was the opposite of an existential, pre-existing unit, but a nation created by the political choice of its members who, in doing so, broke with or at least demoted their former loyalties. (2012: 87) The Burkinabè revolutionaries embraced their predecessors’ emphasis on the patrie, as expressed in the slogan tagged onto the end of many documents and speeches, “La patrie ou la mort, nous vaincrons!” (Homeland or death, we will win). They did not, however, seek to forge their new nation through a process of ethnic or religious assimilation. Instead, they welcomed local diversity as something that could enrich the overarching Burkinabè identity.

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From such a starting point, the Burkinabè nation building project was resolutely anchored in the present, not the past. Unlike most nationalist approaches, there was little attention devoted to highlighting historical origins, myths, or heroes – which in any case were largely identified with specific ethnic histories. Without seeking to erase those local histories and identities, the new national outlook, rooted in revolution, projected building a more united society oriented toward a collective future. The word “nationalism”, as such, rarely featured in official speeches and documents. The CNR appeared to share wider misgivings about the negative aspects of narrowly nationalist ideologies, especially those exclusivist varieties that view non-citizens and the culturally unassimilated as untrustworthy, or worse (Gans 2003). Its leaders did not go as far as envisioning a “nation without nationalism” (Kristeva 1993), but they did seek to emphasize commonalities, not differences. In this, they provided yet another example of the tensions that may exist between nationalist and revolutionary perspectives (Kumar 2015). As part of their efforts to wed national consciousness to a progressive revolutionary agenda, Sankara and his comrades repeatedly stressed the need for internationalism. Globally, that included placing Burkina Faso firmly on the side of countries like Nicaragua and New Caledonia struggling against imperial aggression, non-whites in France and the US challenging racism, and oppressed peoples everywhere. On a regional scale, it also featured numerous calls for pan-Africanism, for surpassing the divisions of colonial borders, uniting the continent’s many states around common interests and aspirations, and averting petty fratricidal conf licts among African neighbors. Following an earlier war between Upper Volta and Mali in 1974 over a contested border, Burkina Faso was unexpectedly attacked by Malian forces in December 1985. Thanks to West African mediators, the war ended within a week. Rather than reacting in a chauvinist manner, the Burkinabè authorities immediately held several rallies to announce the release of Malian prisoners of war and champion friendship between the peoples of the two countries. At one rally, Sankara urged Burkinabè to “restrain any sentiments of hate, rejection, or hostility toward the Malian people”. At another, he stated simply: “Whoever loves their own people, also loves other peoples” (Sidwaya, 6 and 9 January 1986).

Lasting legacy Burkina Faso’s revolutionary project ended abruptly on 15 October 1987, when a military-led faction overthrew the CNR and assassinated Sankara. The factors behind the coup were overwhelmingly political. Amid intense French hostility to Sankara’s radical foreign and domestic policies, the conservative pro-French president of neighboring Côte d’Ivoire, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, encouraged a wing of the Burkinabè leadership to seize power. That wing, which chafed at Sankara’s stringent anti-corruption controls, was headed by Captain Blaise Compaoré, who was married to a member of Houphouët-Boigny’s family.

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Although not a major factor, appeals to ethnicity appeared during the coup’s lead-up. Some Compaoré supporters circulated anonymous f lyers denigrating Sankara. Several were purportedly from a group of “Mossi activists” who urged opposition to the “foreigner” and restoration of Mossi predominance. Since Sankara was not Mossi, while Compaoré was (from a royal lineage, moreover), the point was obvious. Members of a small pseudo-leftist group allied with Compaoré, if not Compaoré himself, were widely believed to be behind the f lyers (Andriamirado 1989: 22, 74, Somé 1990: 30). Since the coup came from within the leadership, supporters of Sankara were taken off guard and demobilized, enabling the new military junta to quickly crush resistance and eventually reverse many of the revolution’s signature initiatives. Externally, that entailed reknitting close relations with France and other Western powers. Domestically, the CDRs collapsed and many of the CNR’s programs and policies were scrapped or undermined. Traditional chiefs’ prestige and power were restored to some extent, reviving an important lever of Mossi authority. After Compaoré adopted a formal multiparty political system in the early 1990s, chiefs became especially instrumental in obliging villagers to back his ruling party and shutting out opposition candidates. Meanwhile, neoliberal economic policies created social dislocations that widened regional inequalities. Still, despite those strains, the Burkinabè national identity forged in the revolutionary era held to a surprising degree. Many citizens had acquired a sense of pride in their specifically African identity and their country’s cultural diversity. Decades after the revolution’s end, significant sectors of the population seemed to readily accept their identification as citizens of Burkina Faso, as Burkinabè. One of the first surveys in Burkina Faso conducted by the AfroBarometer research project asked respondents whether they held most to a national or an ethnic identity. Nearly 50 percent said they identified only as Burkinabè and another eight percent as more national than ethnic (Loada 2007). Such views were accompanied by a strong attachment to Sankara’s legacy (Le Monde, 31 December 2019–5 January 2020). His speeches were readily available in print and online, providing inspiration to new generations of Burkinabè youth disgusted with the successor regime’s corruption, brutal repression, promotion of inequities, and subservience to France. When popular unrest mounted across the country, provoked by Compaoré’s unconstitutional efforts to hang onto power, activists mobilized in unprecedented numbers, with those identifying themselves as “Sankarists” at the forefront. Finally, a two-day insurrection forced Compaoré to f lee at the end of October 2014 (Harsch 2017, Jaffré 2019). Through a year-long political transition and new democratic elections, political and cultural expressions of Burkinabè identity experienced a veritable renaissance. At the political level, it was voiced by leaders of parties across the ideological spectrum as “Burkindlim” or “Burkindi” (from the Mooré word for “integrity”), encompassing a set of moral values and practical conduct that emphasize honesty, inclusion, and solidarity, regardless of ethnic origin,

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religious belief, social status, or even country of citizenship. Many acknowledged that Sankara was the foremost pioneer of such an outlook (“Premier colloque international sur le Burkindi” 2016, Hymne au “Burkindlim” 2017, Louré 2018). Although embraced by some within the political elites, such attempts to reinvigorate Burkinabè identity were largely driven by non-state actors. This was a significant development for a phenomenon that was previously led mainly by state authorities. Artists and writers produced many new works that explored themes of national cohesion or highlighted aspects of the revolutionary era. Scholars turned more attention to the local histories of the country’s various peoples, not just those of the Mossi heartland (Sidwaya, 1 March 2019, L’Observateur Paalga, 13 January 2020). Without strong sentiments of national unity, the social strains caused by repeated insurgent attacks might have had more profound repercussions. The massacres of Peulh villagers prompted demonstrations in support of the victims, with activists wearing T-shirts bearing the slogan “I’m Peulh, Mossi, Lobi … I’m simply Burkinabè” and carrying signs reading “Several communities, only one Faso [homeland]” and “Everyone united against ethnic cleansing” (Sidwaya, 14 January 2019, L’Observateur Paalga, 14 January 2019). In June 2019, hundreds of prominent intellectuals and professionals issued a call for national unity known as the Manéga Appeal, named after a museum devoted to ethnic diversity. Along with former judges, military officers, mediators, and religious and traditional leaders, Titinga Frédéric Pacéré (a jurist, renowned writer, and founder of the Manéga museum) declared that the network’s main goal would be to unite all Burkinabè, “the sons and daughters of the same nation” (L’Observateur Paalga, 5 November 2019). Unfortunately, the government that was elected in November 2015 was less responsive to the Peulh massacres. Not only was it very slow in bringing charges against the suspected perpetrators, but its own security forces were accused of killing Peulh villagers on simple suspicion of aiding insurgents. Expressions of solidarity by diverse social actors are vitally important, yet would be far more effective if accompanied by resolute state action. Contemporary cultural attitudes were built upon the foundations of Burkinabè identity laid decades earlier. As Burkina Faso confronts new challenges – including ethnic tensions – the survival of durable social ties will be essential for ensuring that existing cracks do not deepen into dangerous fractures. Maintaining bonds of national cohesion will also be key to preserving the Burkinabè people’s progressive vision of citizen rights, solidarity, and inclusion.

References Anderson, Benedict (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso.

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Andriamirado, Sennen (1989) Il s’appelait Sankara, Paris: Jeune Afrique Livres. Beucher, Benoît (2009) La naissance de la communauté nationale burkinabè, ou comment le Voltaïque devient un ‘Homme intègre’. Sociétés Politiques Comparées, 3(March), pp. 1–108. Available at: http://www.fasopo.org/sites/default/files/article_n13.pdf (Accessed: 10 September 2016). Beucher, Benoît (2010) Le myth de l’«Empire mossi»: L’affirmation des royautés comme force d’accompagnement ou de rejet des nouveaux pouvoirs centraux, 1897-1991. In Hilgers, Mathieu and Mazzocchetti, Jacinthe (eds.) Révoltes et oppositions dans un régime semi-autoritaire: Le cas du Burkina Faso, Paris: Karthala, pp. 25–50. Bovin, Mette (1990) Nomads of the Drought: Fulbe and Wodabee Nomads Between Power and Marginalization in the Sahel of Burkina Faso and Niger Republic. In: Bovin, Mette and Manger, Leif (eds.) Adaptive Strategies in African Arid Lands, Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, pp. 29–57. Charles, Bernard (1999) Cadres et ethnies après l’indépendance (1958–1987) : Continuités et ruptures. In: Madiéga, Yénouyaba Georges and Nao, Oumarou (eds.) Burkina Faso: Cents ans d’histoire, 1895–1995, Vol. 1, Ouagadougou: Karthala-P.U.O, pp. 1073–1100. Compaoré, Léonard (1987) Author’s interview, Ouagadougou, 5 March. Conseil national de la transition (2015) Procès-verbal de la séance plenière du jeudi, Ouagadougou, 5 November. Englebert, Pierre (1996) Burkina Faso: Unsteady Statehood in West Africa, Boulder: Westview Press. Gans, Chaim (2003) The Limits of Nationalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Guirma, Frédéric (1991) Comment perdre le pouvoir? Le cas de Maurice Yaméogo, Paris: Editions Chaka. Hagberg, Sten (2001) À l'ombre du conf lit violent. Règlement et gestion des conf lits entre agriculteurs karaboro et agro-pasteurs peul au Burkina Faso. Cahiers d’études africaines, 41(161), pp. 45–72. Harsch, Ernest (1987) Burkina Faso: Literacy and Freedom, 1 June, West Africa, pp. 1053–1055. Harsch, Ernest (2014) Thomas Sankara: An African Revolutionary, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Harsch, Ernest (2017) Burkina Faso: A History of Power, Protest and Revolution, London: Zed Books. Hart, Amy (2014) Peace in the Land of Upright People: Religion and Violence in Burkina Faso. Journal for the Study of Religion, 27(2), pp. 172–194. Herbst, Jeffrey (2000) States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hobsbawm, Eric (2012) Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hymne au “Burkindlim” (2017) Available at: www.burkinathinks.com/point-de-vue/ opinions/hymne-au-burkindlim (Accessed: 28 December 2019). Jaffré, Bruno (2019) L’insurrection inachevée Burkina Faso 2014, Paris: Editions Syllepse. Johnston, Hank (2011) States and Social Movements, Cambridge: Polity Press. Kambou, G. Benoît (1988) Le decentralisation au Burkina Faso: Mythe ou realité? Revue burkinabè de droit, 14( July), pp. 379–389. Kristeva, Julia (1993) Nations Without Nationalism, New York: Columbia University Press. Kumar, Krishnan (2015) Nationalism and Revolution: Friends or Foes? Nations and Nationalism, 21(4), pp. 589–608. Loada, Augustin (2007) Etat de la Gouvernance au Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou: Centre de gouvernance démocratique.

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Louré, Arouna (2018) Burkindi pour une révolution nouvelle, Ouagadougou: Éditions Sankofa et Guirli. Mamdani, Mahmood (1996) Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Neuberger, Benyamin (1994) State and Nation in African Thought. In: Hutchinson, John and Smith, Anthony D. (eds.) Nationalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 231–235. Nikiema, Norbert (1999) Evolution de la question de l’utilisation des langues nationales dans les systèmes d’éducation du Burkina Faso de l’indépendance à nos jours. In: Madiéga, Yénouyaba Georges and Nao, Oumarou (eds.) Burkina Faso: Cents ans d’histoire, 1895–1995, Vol. 2, Ouagadougou: Karthala-P.U.O, pp. 1769–1789. Pacéré, Titinga Frédéric (1981) Ainsi on a assassiné tous les Mossé, Sherbrooke, Quebec: Editions Naaman. “Premier colloque international sur le Burkindi” (2016) 28–29 November, Ouagadougou [unpublished report]. Sankara, Thomas (2007) Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution, 1983–87. 2nd ed., New York: Pathfinder Press. Saul, Mahir and Royer, Patrick (2001) West African Challenge to the Empire: Culture and History in the Volta-bani Anticolonial War, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press; Oxford: James Currey. Secrétariat général national des CDR (1986) Première conférence nationale des Comités de défense de la révolution: Documents finaux, Ouagadougou: Imprimerie presses africaines. Skinner, Elliott P. (1964) The Mossi of the Upper Volta: The Political Development of a Sudanese People, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Somé, Valère D. (1990) Thomas Sankara: L’espoir assassiné, Paris: L’Harmattan. Tallet, Bernard (1985) Espaces ethniques et migrations: Comment gérer le mouvement? Politique africain, 20(December), pp. 65–77. Young, Crawford (1994) The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective, New Haven: Yale University Press.

News periodicals Africa (Paris) Carrefour africain (Ouagadougou) L’Evènement (Ouagadougou) Le Monde (Paris) L’Observateur Paalga (Ouagadougou) Sidwaya (Ouagadougou) West Africa (London)

9 JOSÉ CARLOS MARIÁTEGUI AND POLITICS Reform, revolution, and populism Juan E. De Castro

In January 1928, the amity and collaboration that had long characterized the Peruvian left was shattered by the announcement of the presidential candidacy of Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre. A former student leader, Haya, had started the antiimperialist alliance APRA (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana, Popular American Revolutionary Alliance) in Mexico in 1924, after being deported by the government of Augusto B. Leguía. Founded “as a liberation movement” that “identified the United States as the fundamental enemy of the emancipation and development of the peoples of Indo-America” (Manrique 2009: 27),1 the APRA had received widespread support among the Peruvian left, as well as among that of other countries. In fact, its list of sympathizers included many of Latin America’s best-known public intellectuals, such as the Mexican José Vasconcelos and the Argentines Alfredo Palacios and José Ingenieros,2 as well as such significant Peruvian figures as César Vallejo, who would later be considered as one of the greatest Spanish-language poets, and José Carlos Mariátegui, the region’s most important Marxist intellectual. Haya’s candidacy for a new Partido Nacionalista Libertador (Nationalist Liberating Party),3 was seen by Mariátegui and others as representing the transformation of the APRA from a loose anti-imperialist alliance into a national and, as its name implied, nationalist party. Haya’s entrance into the electoral political scene, therefore, fractured this decade-long unity of the left, as differences among socialists – including those aligned with the Bolshevik Revolution, such as Mariátegui, as well as those sympathetic to Social Democratic positions, reform-minded liberals, and, in particular, the group that had grown close to the new candidate during their common exile in Mexico – led to bitter rivalries and accusations. One must note, however, that the Partido Nacionalista Libertador did not renege the principles that had characterized the earlier APRA; principles that,

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to a great degree, had been embraced by the Peruvian left as a whole. First made public in 1926 in, of all places, the English-language Labour Monthly, the APRA’s principles, known as the Five Points, were: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Action of the countries of Latin America against Yankee imperialism. The political unity of Latin America. The nationalization of land and industry. The internationalization of the Panama Canal. The solidarity of all oppressed people and classes of the world. (Haya de la Torre 1926: 756)

In particular, the left, Vanguardia (vanguard) or “new generation” – terms used interchangeably at the time – had been united in their call for land reform and, therefore, for the elimination of the country’s semi-feudal land-holding system that kept many indigenous peasants in a permanent condition of oppression, as well as in their opposition to the ever-encroaching US imperialism in the country and in the region as a whole. While the specific characteristics of land tenure in Peru were not explicitly mentioned in the Five Points, they were implicit in the call for the nationalization of land. In fact, the platform of the Partido Nacionalista Libertador del Peru – also known as the “Esquema del Plan de México”, since it was formulated by Haya and his collaborators in Mexico City – can be seen as expressing many of the ideas associated with the APRA and, more generally, the new generation. In it one finds repeated references to the need for a radical redistribution of land: by arguing for the need to “abolish the power of the land holding class”; by calling for the “the return of the land to the Peruvian people, giving it to those who work it, breaking up large estates, and procuring to reestablish, on the basis of the indigenous communities ... the new agrarian and agricultural organism” (“Esquema del Plan de México” 1948: 292, 293); and by embracing Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata’s motto – “Land and Freedom” – as that of the new political party (1948: 293). The most radical of the APRA’s Five Points is repeated in the new party’s platform: “the nationalization of land and industry” (1948: 291). Understandably, given its role as a Peruvian political document, only the call for the internationalization of the Panama Canal is absent from the “Esquema del Plan de México”. Despite the continuity between the APRA’s Five Points and the new party’s platform, José Carlos Mariátegui, who, in addition to supporting the APRA had collaborated closely with Haya throughout the 1920s, rejected the latter’s candidacy.4 It is true that only a relatively small number of intellectuals and activists participated in these debates. Moreover, in response to the transformation of the APRA into an electoral political party, Mariátegui helped found the Partido Socialista (Socialist Party), as a political, though not electoral, alternative, given that the party’s political program did not envision any type of electoral participation. While Mariátegui’s Socialist Party would, soon after his early death in

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1930, be transformed into another cookie-cutter Communist Party, Haya and his collaborators would go on to found the Partido Aprista Peruano (Peruvian Apra Party) in 1931, which was for many the main forerunner of Latin American populism.5 Mariátegui’s and Haya’s political breakup could easily seem to be nothing more than a superficial disagreement between two anti-imperialist leaders who had more things in common than they would have been willing to admit. Or simply, as another consequence of the policy of class against class, which prohibited any collaboration with reformist groups as mandated by the Communist International. However, as Alberto Flores Galindo notes: “Separately, Mariátegui and Haya feverishly dedicated themselves to epistolary exchanges presenting their arguments time after time and, in this manner, as they explained and pinned down their arguments, their disagreements deepened” (1980: 82). The brief clash between Haya and Mariátegui ultimately contrasted two different views of politics. On the one hand, Haya’s Partido Nacionalista Libertador represents a very early version of the populist politics that some have seen as characteristic of Latin America and even as a marker of Latin America’s exception from the social norms that characterize Europe and North America. For Haya, policy, class, and even doctrinal contradictions are ultimately resolved in the figure of the leader, who is presented not only as the ultimate arbiter but even as a kind of secular messiah.6 In contrast, Mariátegui presents what could be described as the first criticism of populism in his rejection of the manipulative use of nationalism and in his stress on the need for leaders to act within strict political and ideological limits. Moreover, he also proposes a politics radically different from that prescribed by the Third International. Instead of a one size fits all communism, for Mariátegui, local reality is the keystone on which to base Marxist interpretation and action. In Peru, this implied taking into account the existence of living indigenous cultures and institutions, such as the agrarian commune and the fact that most workers – proletarians, but principally peasants and miners – were of Andean Amerindian origin.

A world of possibility The social and historical context that gave rise to the Peruvian vanguard or new generation was the crisis of what today is known as the Aristocratic Republic (1895–1919). Born out of the political chaos caused by defeat at the hands of Chile (1879), as a result of which Peru lost the whole southern part of its territory, the Aristocratic Republic had been characterized by an attempt at conservative modernization of its colonial administrative inheritance as well as its economic and social substratum of landed estates and racially based exploitation. Founded in 1895 by the alliance of what had been till then two opposing movements – the putschist and personalist Partido Democráta, led by Nicolás de Piérola7 and supported by rural landed elites and middle classes, and the Partido Civil8, which represented the economic elites and, as the name implies, opposed military coups

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and governments. The alliance helped usher in a period of relative growth and prosperity based on the strengthening and developing of a limited democracy.9 As Alberto Flores Galindo notes in his classic La agonía de Mariátegui (The Agony of Mariátegui): “The Aristocratic Republic had represented, between 1895 and 1919, the construction of a State based on the conf luence of the interests of oligarchs and landowners, based on the marginalization of the great majorities” (1980: 19). Nevertheless, it was a period that saw the modernization of many urban centers, as well as the beginning of a period of sustained economic growth. However, this period of growth and respect for limited democratic institutions did not imply an absolute lack of social turbulence, in particular given that the inherited neocolonial social inequities were never eliminated. Not only did indigenous revolts take place, including a major rebellion, that of Rumi Maqui, that shook the southern Andes between 1915 and 1919,10 but, as a consequence of the previously mentioned economic growth, an urban working-class and a concomitant activist labor movement, inf luenced by anarchism, developed.11 These urban popular sectors would find political expression in the brief proto-populist government of Guillermo Billinghurst (1912–1914) who, for instance, embraced key worker demands, such as the eight-hour work day.12 Despite differences, these urban and rural uprisings were not disconnected. According to Flores Galindo, Rumi Maqui, who led the attempt to reestablish the Inca Empire, “was actually a sergeant major ... Teodomiro Gutiérrez Cuevas, apparently of anarchist background” (1980: 41).13 While it is clear that the rise of worker militancy and discontent in the Andean countryside can be clearly seen as signs of the growing instability of the Aristocratic Republic during the decade of the 1910s, these did not fully detract from an overall perception of order and growth. The Aristocratic Republic came to an end in 1919, when incoming President Augusto B. Leguía dissolved congress and took over the government (He would stay in power until 1930, when he was toppled by the military as a result of the worldwide economic crisis). While Leguía had been a stalwart of the Aristocratic Republic – he had even been a civilista president between 1908 and 1912 – his new regime, significantly known as “La patria nueva” (The New Fatherland), not only appealed to the urban middle classes but also, at first, even to the labor movement. The New Fatherland, however, depended particularly on the growing presence of US capital and inf luence in Peruvian society. Therefore, Leguía’s regime can also be seen as an attempt to provide an alternative to the rapidly disintegrating Aristocratic Republic, even if, despite some legal and rhetorical gesturing, his government ultimately did not resolve the problems caused by the expansion of the landed estates, often at the expense of indigenous lands, or eliminate structural discrimination against indigenous peasants.14 During the 1920s, it seemed clear that the old had passed, but what was to replace it was not clear. The rise of the new generation, with its demands for not only social but also cultural modernization, represented another response to the breakdown

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of the Aristocratic Republic. Obviously, the conf luence between local and international crises – the latter represented by the Russian Revolution and the political crises faced in Europe and, to a lesser degree, the lingering example of the Mexican Revolution – heightened the feeling that a new social order was coming. Evidence for this worldwide transformation could also be found in the appearance of new arts and literatures, such as Surrealism or Cubism, that rejected old canons and embraced hitherto unknown means of expression. The political activity of Haya and especially that of Mariátegui, for whom literature and art had an important political valence, as well as the literature of César Vallejo or even Martín Adán can be seen as divergent responses not only to the political and artistic winds of modernization coming from abroad but also to this generalized feeling that a new world was being born. The politics and art of the new Peruvian generation responded in a different manner to the rush of possibility opened by the breakdown of the Aristocratic Republic and the feeling that a new Peru, free from colonial residues in society, as well as in culture, was finally possible.

Haya and Mariátegui as political and cultural leaders The following comments made by Magda Portal, an important poet and frequent collaborator of both Haya and Mariátegui during the 1920s, give insight into the underlying differences between both men as political and cultural leaders: With J.C. Mariátegui, at the get togethers in his home, the conversations were always open-ended, free-wheeling, always having to do with socialist thought but not geared toward ideological definition, political education, or proselytizing. Haya, however, put forward a specific goal. His intention was to lay the groundwork for a new sociopolitical movement in Latin America. (quoted in Weaver 2009: 42)15 Underlying these two approaches to politics and, more generally, sociability were significantly different views about what constituted political change and how immediately feasible it was within the Peruvian context. The “open ended” nature of Mariátegui’s activism and politics is expressed in “Presentación de Amauta”, the editorial to the first issue of the magazine of the same name published in 1926. One must keep in mind that, as the Argentine sociologist Fernanda Beigel has argued, Amauta “constitutes the axis through which Mariátegui’s aesthetic-political project passed through” (Beigel 2003: 51). In other words, for Mariátegui Amauta was not only an intervention in the cultural sphere but, given that the Peruvian Marxist believed in the centrality of cultural change to any attempt at changing Peru’s political and economic structures, also a political intervention.

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In “Presentation de Amauta”, Mariátegui writes about these political implications: it is not necessary to explicitly state that Amauta is not a free tribune, open to all currents of thought. We who have founded this magazine do not conceive of culture and art as being agnostic. We feel part of a belligerent, polemical, force. We do not give in to the fallacious criterion of tolerance to all ideas. For us, there are good and bad ideas. (1981b: 238) However, Mariátegui also stated that: The purpose of this magazine is to propose, explain, and understand Peruvian problems from doctrinaire and scientific perspectives. But we will always consider Peru within the panorama of the world. We will study all great movements of political, philosophical, artistic, literary and scientific renovation. Nothing human is alien to us. (1981b: 239) One could perhaps see in Mariátegui’s statements the tension between the stress on the political valence of ideas, what he, perhaps surprisingly, presents as their “goodness”, and his simultaneous opening to all new ideas, even if he uses one of Karl Marx’s favorite quotes to indicate his belief in the relevance of these new artistic movements and ideas. Given this stress on the importance of all new cultural tendencies, it is not surprising that the first issue of Amauta would include a Spanish version of Sigmund Freud’s essay “Resistance to Theory”, as well as poetry by the Peruvian symbolist José María Eguren, and a preview of Tempestad en los Andes, the celebration of indigenous Andean culture written by Luis E. Valcárcel, the historian and anthropologist originally from Cuzco. While the magazine could appear to celebrate intellectual eclecticism and, therefore, contradict the claim that Amauta was a politically committed magazine, the fact is that it closely ref lects Mariátegui’s stated cultural and political goals. The combination of political, social, critical, and artistic texts found in Amauta do not ref lect a putative dilettantism on Mariátegui’s part – as his Aprista critics, such as Portal, would soon begin to claim – but rather his attempt at making his magazine into a group project capable of bringing together different individuals and sectors united by their common rejection of the Aristocratic Republic and Leguía’s attempt at a partial capitalist modernization. Regardless of their explicit politics or lack thereof, all the texts published in Amauta were distant from the celebration of colonial values and institutions or, for that matter, US style capitalism, and therefore they could be seen as contributing to the creation of a new decolonized culture. Marcel Velázquez Castro has argued about Amauta: “A magazine is not only an extraordinary collective adventure but the creation of a space that contributes

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to design an imagined community of readers and citizens” (2004: 4). Velázquez’s reference to Benedict Anderson’s classic Imagined Communities, a text that precisely defines the nation as an “imagined community”, makes clear that Amauta can be seen not only as part of a joint cultural and political project but also as an expression of the vision of socialism and Peru implicit in Mariátegui’s activism – one that combined decolonization with a surprising plurality of opinion.16 It is therefore possible to see in Mariátegui’s support of the APRA as a loose alliance around basic anti-imperialist and anti-colonial principles, as well as in in his rejection of the Partido Nacionalista Libertador, an analogous belief in politics as the creation of spaces that would help agglutinate individuals around new decolonized imaginaries rather than as something leading to the disjunction of ideas and people.17 This belief in the necessity of coalition building around the rejection of colonial, social, and political imaginaries and in the need for their replacement with progressive ones is found even in Mariátegui’s more explicitly political ventures. For instance, in a speech given to workers, his first public activity after returning from Italy in 1923, titled “The World Crisis and the Peruvian Proletariat”,18 Mariátegui writes: And the proletariat in general needs to find out about the great dimensions of the world crisis. This need is even greater in that the socialist, laborite, syndicalist, or libertarian part of the proletariat constitutes the vanguard. That part of the proletariat is most combative, conscious, and more prone to struggle and is prepared. That part of the proletariat is charged with the direction of the great proletariat actions. That part of the proletariat whose historic role it is to represent the Peruvian proletariat in the present instance. It is in that part of the proletariat, whatever its particular creed, in a word, that has class conscience, has revolutionary conscience. (2011d: 297–298) While obviously addressed to working-class audience and therefore in some ways less expansive in its social appeal than his later more explicitly cultural work in Amauta, the fact is that this passage is still representative of his belief in inclusion and coalition building. Mariátegui appeals not only to socialist workers but also to anarchists – the actual meaning in Spanish of libertaria, mistranslated as libertarian – and even unexpected Peruvian disciples of the British Laborites, as all common members of the worker vanguard. In this manner, Mariátegui attempts to bring together all radical sectors of the working-class, bypassing European divisions between Marxists and anarchists. As Portal’s comments above point out, despite having originally founded the APRA as a loose alliance, Haya’s basic approach to politics was completely different. Unlike Mariátegui, who saw in the creation of a socialist imagined community a necessary first step for all radical politics, Haya saw discipline and hierarchy as a sufficient condition for the beginning of social change. Thus the third point of his party’s “Esquema del Plan de México” states:

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[F]or the realization and efficacy of the liberating revolution of Peru, it is established that the only organization that will achieve it ... will be the Partido Nacionalista Libertador del Peru, a political and military organization that recognizes Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre as both its founder and supreme leader and that will be led by a Central Committee temporarily located in Mexico, composed by local committees, subordinated to the Central Committee, with public or secret location in other cities of Peru and America. (1948: 290) Unbeknownst to Mariátegui, Haya had already been stressing the role played by strict party hierarchy in radical politics at least since 1926. In the first of a series of private letters sent to, of all people, Eudocio Ravines,19 the future man of Moscow in Lima and later man of Washington, Haya wrote in 1926: “What is essential in this moment is to form proletarian cadres, constitute the red army, in a word” (quoted in Flores Galindo 1988: 73); and: “Not the multitude, nor the guerrilla, but cadres, unit, Army. These are what win revolutions” (1988: 78). Subordination, obedience, military discipline, and therefore a top-down view of politics were at the core of Haya’s view of politics. Given this stress on a hierarchical party led by an absolute leader, it is perhaps not surprising that the document that announced his candidacy builds up Haya into a heroic figure worthy of this exalted position of being the exclusive representative of Peruvian youth. Referring to a 1922 encounter between Leguía and the young Haya, the communiqué notes: Leguía, representing the old generation, burdened with crimes and mistakes, embodying all the vices of the oligarchies that have betrayed the fatherland, found himself face to face with Haya de la Torre, who represented the new national generation, pristine, honest, and sincere to the point of sacrifice, and capable as no previous one. (“El Partido Nacionalista Peruano” 1979: 341–342) While one could easily see in these words one of the many exaggerations that characterize practically all political discourse and that build up even the most anodyne candidates into champions of vaguely described social causes and groups, it is also compatible with the buildup of the political leader into a figure of ultimate authority. This stress on the leader as the fulcrum of political activity will become even more central to Haya’s later Aprista Party. As Finchelstein notes: [I]t was singularly clear that Aprismo was a Peruvian nationalist protopopulist organization ... It put forward a postwar anti-imperialist front against both communism and liberalism under the vertical leadership of Haya, who was officially defined as the “Jefe Máximo”, the chief interpreter of the “vague and imprecise desires of the multitude”. (2017: 51)

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In fact, former aprista Víctor Villanueva argued that the member of the party “worships the ‘Leader’ and follows him without much care about the direction he is leading. It seems that Haya de la Torre was more concerned with inculcating a mystique, a faith, rather than an ideology, in his partisans” (quoted in Manrique 2009: 56). Given Haya’s stress on discipline, hierarchy, and the centrality of the leader to any and all political activity, it is not surprising that he ordered Mariátegui, in one of the (semi) public letters they exchanged in 1928 to, “[p]lace yourself in reality and attempt to follow the discipline not of revolutionary Europe but rather revolutionary America” (Mariátegui 1994: 379). Discipline and hierarchy override any attempt at rational argumentation in this passage. Needless to say, in Haya’s perspective, only he represented Revolutionary America. One must note, however, that Mariátegui believed that the quest for a politics based on fronts and alliances also implied one based on decanting groups and individuals that ultimately were unable or unwilling to embrace the radical changes he believed necessary for the creation of a modern and socialist Peru. As he wrote precisely in the first editorial of Amauta: The first goal proposed by the writers of Amauta is to remind ourselves of who we are and get to know ourselves better ... At the same time that it will attract other good elements, it will ward off those f luctuating and weak elements who now f lirt with the vanguard, but once it requires sacrifice will quickly abandon it. Amauta will sift the members of the vanguard – militants and sympathizers – until it separates the chaff from the wheat or leads to a phenomenon of polarization and concentration. (1981b: 237–238) At the core of Mariátegui’s objection to Haya’s candidacy is that the transformation of the APRA into a political party foreclosed a process of social and ideological definition before it had been concluded.

Leaders and caudillos Mariátegui’s criticism of the transformation of the APRA into a political party centered on the figure of a charismatic leader capable of serving as ultimate arbiter and unifier of a heterogeneous political movement, and it can be seen as an early criticism of populism. The Peruvian Marxist found two main precedents for Haya’s new politics: one rooted in Latin American history and another redolent of the worst European developments he had witnessed personally during his stay in Italy between 1919 and 1923. Mariátegui first saw in the Partido Nacionalista Libertador and, in particular, in the discourse that surrounded Haya’s candidacy, an updated version of the Latin American caudillo tradition, a kind politics with a long history in the region.20 As we know, since the nineteenth century Latin America had been characterized by

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the struggle among military leaders for political power, by democratic means or otherwise.21 As Pedro Castro writes, [W]hen we refer to a caudillo, we are denoting those who exercise a special leadership based on their personal traits; caudillos arise when a society no longer has faith in its institutions. Caudillos have a greater weight than their own parties, to the degree that they sometimes overtake them. (2007: 11) As we have seen, the breakdown of the Aristocratic Republic and the growing unease with Leguía’s attempt at a (partial) capitalist modernization of Peru could be seen as justifying this dissatisfaction with the country’s institutions and, one can add, social and economic-social structures. Haya’s charismatic leadership can, therefore, be seen as one of the possible responses to this social breakdown. In particular, Mariátegui found in the document that announced Haya’s candidacy an example of “creole methods” characterized by “the caudillesque declamation, the empty and boastful rhetoric” (1994: 373). In a letter to Ravines, Mariátegui develops his criticism of Haya: “Haya suffers too deeply the demon of caudillismo and personalism” (1994: 490). Like Nicolás de Piérola, for instance, Haya would be nothing but a caudillo willing to use any political method, from f lorid speech to force, to achieve power. However, Mariátegui, qualifies his rejection of “personalism”: I know caudillismo can still be useful, but only in condition that it be totally subordinated to a doctrine and a group. If one has to adapt to the environment, we have nothing to criticize the old politics ... Haya does not care about language; I do. And not due to a literary consideration but because of ideology and morals. If we do not, at least, distinguish ourselves from the past, I fear that in the end, for the same reasons of adaptation and mimicry, we will end but differing ourselves in the individuals, in the personalities. (1994: 491) Although one cannot but be surprised by Mariátegui’s acceptance of the possibility of a progressive caudillo, for him, the key to politics resides in political ideas and ideology, the subordination of the leader to these, and, ultimately, in an ideological and even linguistic transparency that would link doctrine and action. Instead of the party serving the caudillo’s ambitions, he believed that the political leader, no matter how charismatic, should serve as a vehicle for the dissemination of radical ideas. Mariátegui saw ideological transparency and coherence at the core of politics. For him the purpose of politics was not to draft followers for a political leader but rather to interpellate individuals toward new ways of seeing reality. This is why he objected so strenuously to the absence of the word “socialism” in the

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discourse of the Partido Nacionalista Libertador. Could a radical political party in the 1920s – not an open alliance or front as was the early APRA – not be socialist? Underlying this concern with the need for political self-definition as socialist was what he saw as another possible genealogy for Haya’s new politics, not Latin American, but European: fascism. Mariátegui writes to the Mexico group: Who constituted the first fascists? Almost all these elements had a deeper revolutionary background and history than we do. They were extreme radical leftists, like Mussolini, a protagonist of the red week in Bologna; heroic revolutionary unionists, like Carridoni, a formidable worker organizer; anarchists who were great intellectuals and philosophers, like Massimo Rocca ... All these people were or felt revolutionary, anti-clerical, republican, “beyond communism”, according to Marinetti’s phrase ... Tactics forced them to attack the revolutionary bureaucracy, break with the socialist party, destroy the workers’ organization … Socialism, the proletariat, were, despite all their bureaucratic deadweight, the revolution. Fascism had necessarily to be a reactionary force. (1994: 372–373) For Mariátegui, only socialism permitted mass politics based on the rejection of liberalism to not become reactionary. Haya would respond to Mariátegui by arguing for what Michael Löwy has called “Indo-American exceptionalism” (Löwy 2007: 10). The then-presidential candidate argued: “The APRA is a party, alliance, and front. Impossible? ... The fact that there has not been something similar in Europe does not mean it cannot be in America. In Europe they had neither skyscrapers nor cannibals” (Mariátegui 1994: 378). As Löwy argues: “For Haya de la Torre, the Indo-American ‘spacetime’ is governed by its own laws and is profoundly different from the European ‘space-time’ analyzed by Marx” (2007: 10). While Mariátegui believed in the importance of Peruvian (and other) local reality, as exemplified in the title of his masterwork Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, he also saw Latin America as part of not only a world economy but also a world revolution. As he had already stated in “The World Crisis and the Peruvian Proletariat”, which, as we saw, marked the precise moment when he began his Marxist political and intellectual activity, “Peru, like the other peoples is not then outside the crisis, it is inside it” (Mariátegui 2011d: 297). The idea of “Indo-American” exceptionalism was foreign to him.

Culture and politics After Haya’s candidacy and Mariátegui’s reaction against it led to the breakup of the Peruvian new generation, the Peruvian Marxist wrote new editorial in Amauta titled “Anniversary and Balance Sheet”:

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To us, the work of ideological definition seems completed. In any case, we have already heard categorical and solicited opinions being expressed. All debate is opened up for those who opine, not for those who remain silent. Amauta’s first act has concluded. In the second act, it does not have to call itself a magazine of the “new generation”, of the “vanguard”, of “the left”. To be faithful to the Revolution, it is enough to be a socialist magazine. (2011a: 128) The fact that Mariátegui had vehemently argued with Haya regarding the need to continue with the APRA as an alliance contradicts the statement that “the work of ideological definition” had been completed. Implicitly, in his letters, one finds Mariátegui arguing that, on the contrary, the breakup of the so-called “new generation” had been premature.22 The above statement of principle proposes a clear restriction in the ideological field represented by the magazine. However, contradicting this putative embrace of what could seem to some a now rigid political position, Amauta would still be characterized by ideological inclusiveness. Amauta never stopped including creative works and even essays by progressive but non-Marxist writers like Luis Alberto Sánchez or Waldo Frank. In fact, authors close to Haya, such as Portal and Antenor Orrego were still published. That said, Mariátegui’s main response to the constitution of the Partido Nacionalista Libertador was explicitly political. Together with a group of close associates, he founded the Partido Socialista (Socialist Party) in 1928. While its condition as a group rather than an individual project implies that one cannot fully identify the Socialist Party’s proposals with Mariátegui’s ideas, it does provide a general guide to what the Peruvian Marxist believed had to be done. What first catches one’s attention is, of course, the name. If Mariátegui criticized Haya and the Mexico group for rejecting what the Peruvian Marxist believed should be the guiding ideology for all radicals, his party will proudly blazon the name of Socialist. But in other aspects the new Socialist Party continued the common concerns of the Peruvian “new generation”. For instance, “The Programmatic Principles of the Socialist Party” embraced the anti-imperialist ethos that had characterized the APRA, but in clearly socialist terms: “The emancipation of the country’s economy is possible only by the action of the proletarian masses in solidarity with the global anti-imperialist struggle” (2011: 239). Likewise, the document addresses the unequal land tenancy and the discrimination and exploitation of Peru’s indigenous population it generated, another key concern of the new generation, in terms inspired by Mariátegui’s proposals in his Seven Interpretive Essays: “Socialism finds the same elements of a solution to the land question in the livelihoods of communities, as it does in large agricultural enterprises” (“Programmatic Principles” 2011: 239). In fact, as early as 1924, in his essay “Peru’s Principal Problem”, Mariátegui had identified in his country’s indigenous population (rather than in a charismatic leader) the agents for political change, in particular when it came to the issue

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of land tenancy: “The solution to the problem of the Indian must be a social solution. It must be worked out by the Indian themselves” (2011c: 142). In order to empower the indigenous population, Mariátegui would promote the outreach of his party to the Andean highlands and attempt to unionize the region’s miners. However, instead of Haya’s appeal to nationalist emotion, “The Programmatic Principles” makes use of a class-based social analysis, moreover one that stresses the connections of Peruvian problems to international economic realities. Thus, they begin by stressing “the international character of the contemporary economy” (2011: 237). For Mariátegui, political solutions to Peruvian problems are necessarily framed by the country’s participation in a world economy and, as we have seen, a world culture. “The Programmatic Principles” continues the analysis Mariátegui had proposed in “The World Crisis and the Peruvian Proletariat”. Originally a speech given at the Universidad Popular González Prada, an educational center formed by Haya where intellectuals spoke to worker audiences, this text argued that “capitalist civilization has internationalized the life of humanity; it has created the material connections among all peoples that establish an inevitable solidarity among them” (2011d: 296). Given Mariátegui’s simultaneous acknowledgement of the importance of local reality and what we would today call globalization to the constitution of Peruvian socialism, it is not surprising that in the fourth of the “Programmatic Principles” one reads: Capitalism is in its imperialist stage. It is the capitalism of monopolies, of finance capital, of imperialist wars for the plundering of markets and providing sources of raw materials. The practice of Marxist socialism in this period is that of Marxism-Leninism. Marxism-Leninism is the revolutionary method in the stage of imperialism and monopoly. The Peruvian Socialist Party takes it as its method of struggle. (2011: 238) Instead of the nationalism present in Haya’s political discourse and in the name of the first political party – Partido Nacionalista Libertador – Mariátegui acknowledged the global nature of capital and of revolution. But, as we have seen, he also rejected the dogmatic and Eurocentric character of Stalinist communism. Even though Mariátegui’s stress on the socialist nature of the new political party and its policies constituted a rebuke to Haya and his group, it also represented the rejection of one of Lenin’s famous 21 conditions required for a party to affiliate with the Communist International,23 that a party be named Communist. However, the Socialist Party’s avoidance of the word Communism did not imply a rejection of Marxism and, as we have seen in its “Programmatic Principles”, of Marxism-Leninism. Nevertheless, as Roland Forgues has noted: One can read in the “Programmatic Principles of the Peruvian Socialist Party” that it takes “Marxism-Leninism” as its “method of struggle”, but

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we don’t find even one mention of what constitutes its specific basis: “the dictatorship of the proletariat”. It is thus clearly discarded as an element of its own political practice, and therefore, “Marxism-Leninism” has been reduced to a concept emptied of its real content. (1995: 223) Forgues also notes: “the concept of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, present in the ... conferences from 1923–1924 and in his first book [La escena contemporánea] is, after that first period, practically banished from Mariátegui’s vocabulary” (1995: 169). Another example of Mariátegui’s distance from orthodox communism can be found in his posthumous Defensa del marxismo, made up of material published during 1928–1930. The banishment of this key tenet of Marxism-Leninism is, perhaps, best exemplified by the fact that in Defensa del marxismo, a book often read as a criticism of social democracy, neither “dictatorship of the proletariat” nor “Marxism-Leninism” are ever used.24 Rather than following the one size fits all politics of international Communism, Mariátegui attempted to develop new leftist politics that responded to local Peruvian contexts. For instance, at a time when a rigid “class against class” approach had become the prescribed policy of world communism – a policy that, one must add, facilitated the rise of fascism by denying the possibility of alliances with other labor or democratic movements – the Socialist Party explicitly called for support by “the proletariat and by the conscious elements of the middle class” (“Programmatic Principles” 2011: 242). The open nature of the Socialist Party also ref lected the relatively low numbers of industrial workers, despite the economic growth that had taken place during the Aristocratic Republic and the Leguía regime. Although the Socialist Party was defined as the “vanguard of the proletariat”, the party was actually proposed as being made up by members of diverse class origins. As Flores Galindo notes, Mariátegui “conceived the Socialist Party as a large mass organization” (1980: 99) rather than as an exclusive working-class or doctrinaire organization The absence of a discussion of the structure of the party – this would be hammered out in meetings that Mariátegui, due to his health, did not attend – can be seen as contradicting the Partido Nacionalista Libertador’s stress on the centrality of the leader and the need for a rigid party hierarchy and discipline. As Flores Galindo notes: [D]istrust towards any [type] of elite is a frequent [trait] in Mariátegui. During the time of the discussion with Haya, [he] writes about Charles Chaplin to remind us that, in any case, “elite means elected”, always subordinated to the majority. (1980: 68–69) As should be clear, Mariátegui’s stress on the subordination of political elites “to the majority”, in addition to implying a clear criticism of Haya’s and his circle’s view of politics, also represented a rejection of Leninist party structure.25

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But perhaps the most radical aspect of Mariátegui’s response to this crisis of the Peruvian left was in helping create a national labor union: Central General de Trabajadores del Perú (General Confederation of Peruvian Workers), also known as CGTP. Its first conclusion of its founding “Manifesto” declares the need to “[f ]ight for the creation of a united labor front without any distinction as to political tendencies in a United Proletariat Central” (2011b: 346). As mentioned above, this concern with working-class unity beyond superficial political differences, in addition to being one of the constants in Mariátegui’s thought from his return to Peru in 1923 until his death in 1930, also contradicted the organizational structures proposed by the Comintern. Another instance of Mariátegui’s and the Socialist’s ideological independence is that the Manifesto, in addition to stressing the importance of “The Child Labor Problem” or “The Peasant Problem”, also notes the centrality of “The Woman Problem”. Therefore, the texts produced by Mariátegui alone or in collaboration with his fellow socialists can be seen as lucidly tackling issues of discrimination by gender, race, and culture. Thus, according to the “Manifesto”, “[i]f the juvenile masses are so cruelly exploited, proletarian women suffer the same or worse exploitation” (2011b: 349). The “Manifesto” goes on to decry the difference in pay between women and men, discrimination against pregnant women, etc. In this founding document of a radical but inclusive workingclass movement, issues we now associate with second-wave feminism are foregrounded. However, what may be the CGTP’s and Mariátegui’s greatest political innovation was the outreach to the country’s miners. Not only were miners at the frontlines of the imperialist expansion into Peru’s economy, but also, because most miners were indigenous, they constituted a natural connection with the country’s Andean peasant population. As Mariátegui noted in “The Problem of Race in Latin America”, a text co-written with Hugo Pesce, who presented it in The First Latin American Conference in Buenos Aires, in June 1929: For the progressive ideological education of the Indigenous masses, the workers’ vanguard has at its disposal those militant elements of the Indian race who, in mines or particularly in urban centers, come into contact with trade union and political movements. They assimilate its principles and receive training to play a role in the emancipation of their race. Workers from an Indigenous milieu often return temporarily or permanently to their communities. Their language skills allow them to carry out an effective mission as instructors of their racial and class brothers. Indian farmers will only understand individuals who speak their own language. They will always distrust whites and mestizos, and, in turn, it is very difficult for whites and mestizos to carry out the hard work of coming to the Indigenous milieu to bring class propaganda. (2011: 323–324)

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Mariátegui saw the labor movement as bridging cultural, linguistic, and geographic divides by including rural and indigenous workers, in addition to those who spoke Spanish and lived in the cities.

Conclusion By late 1929 Mariátegui’s public and private life were in crisis. This was partly the result of the political hardening of the Leguía regime. In November of that year, the police broke into his house, his correspondence was confiscated, and he was put on temporary house arrest. Additionally, the Comintern had sent an agent, Eudocio Ravines, to help bring the nascent Peruvian socialist movement into the Soviet fold. In fact, many of Mariátegui’s closest collaborators were progressively hewing closer to the Comintern’s line and ultimately supported Ravines in his efforts.26 Precisely as the Peruvian Marxist attempted to create a mass socialist movement that had as its heart the indigenous working class – Mariátegui often noted that four fifths of the Peruvian population were of indigenous ancestry27 – the Comintern began to impose its hardline class against class politics. Furthermore, Mariátegui’s health was also deteriorating rapidly as the osteomyelitis he had struggled against since childhood – he had already had a leg amputated in 1924 – worsened. Mariátegui, therefore, decided to move to Buenos Aires in search of better medical treatment and in order to continue publishing a version of Amauta. Two of his closest friends, North American writer Waldo Frank and Argentine editor Samuel Glusberg, worked feverishly to ease the Peruvian Marxist’s relocation to the capital of Argentina. However, just before he was scheduled to leave Lima, in 1930, Mariátegui died. Much has been speculated about Mariátegui’s possible life in Argentina. While Mariátegui had always idealized Argentina as a bastion of liberalism in Latin America, not long after his death, the General José Félix Uriburu would establish the first of the region’s regimes identified with “the fascist dictatorial model” (Finchelstein 2017: 254). But the right-wing turn of the 1930s in Latin America was not the only challenge the Peruvian Marxist would have faced. After all, the Comintern had begun to crack down on any real or imagined dissidence within its files. But all one can do is speculate.28 However, what remains of Mariátegui’s politics is his radical reinterpretation of Peruvian reality that led to the discovery or the potential of the country’s indigenous population as revolutionary agents and his stress on the political value of cultural activity. In particular, he attempted to create a mass political party that would incorporate the indigenous majority and their ways of life and cultural institutions not as dead weight but rather as revolutionary resources. Mariátegui seemed to intuit the possibility of a Marxism that would take race and culture not only as central problems but also as keys for radical political solutions, while avoiding the trap of national exceptionalism.

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Notes 1 In this case, as in that of all books in Spanish in the References, the translation is mine. 2 José Vasconcelos, the author of The Cosmic Race (1925), one of the key Latin American texts published during the decade, had been minister of culture in Mexico (1921– 1924). Among his many achievements was the promotion of the muralist movement. José Ingenieros (1877–1925), the author of El hombre mediocre (1913), was Argentina’s foremost essayist and social thinker. Alfredo Palacios (1878–1965) was an Argentine politician and, like Ingenieros, an early socialist. All three were on different occasions named “maestros de la juventud” (masters/teachers of the youth) during Latin American regional student events. 3 Among the bizarre aspects of Haya’s foray into electoral politics is that two different names are used for the new party. Thus, in the “Esquema del plan de México” – which details Haya’s political program – the party is named as “Partido Nacionalista Libertador del Perú”, while in the document that that announced his candidacy, it is named “Partido Nacionalista Peruano”. Another unusual aspect of the candidacy was that Haya was not 35 years old, the required age to be an official candidate for the presidency. 4 In his masterwork, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (1928), published about the time of the distancing between both political leaders, Mariátegui refers positively to Haya on several occasions, including the following: “After writing this essay, I find ideas in Haya de la Torre’s book Por la emancipation de la America Latina that fully coincide with mine on the agrarian question in general and the Indian community in particular. Since we share the same points of view, we necessarily reach the same conclusions” (1970: 58–59). 5 According to Federico Finchelstein: “The protopopulism that was ... closer to what modern populism was after the war was Aprismo in Peru” (2017: 115). One must note, however, that the Argentine historian conf lates Haya’s early vision of Aprismo as a panLatin American alliance with his later explicitly nationalist movement exemplified by the names Partido Nacionalista Libertador/Partido Nacionalista Peruano, as well as the later Partido Aprista Peruano. While the Peruvian governments will use the APRA’s early continental claims as a justification to ban the later Partido Aprista as “an illegal international organization” (Quiroz 2013: 261) – the same reason that would be given to ban the Communist Party – the fact is that, while Haya never stopped seeing himself as an international figure, the Party was clearly a Peruvian and a nationalist organization. In fact, as we will see, already in the 1920s, Haya and his followers would start branding Mariátegui as a rootless cosmopolitan, implicitly presenting themselves as Peruvian. 6 Federico Finchelstein writes about the populist self-understanding of politics as direct rule, from the “‘astronomical distance’ between the leader and his subjects to the notion of the messianic leader as a transcendental savior of the people and the nation” (2017: 182–183). 7 According to Aníbal Quijano, Piérola, despite his popular appeal, and his Partido Demócrata “represented provincial merchants and smaller landowners, and had a seigneurial orientation” (2007: xii). 8 Aníbal Quijano describes the Partido Civil as originally representing “the culmination of a movement against the militarism of the caudillos, [and] proposing the economic and administrative modernization of the country, with a nationalist orientation that even proposed the nationalization of guano and saltpeter the two main resources for export of Peru at the time [early 1870s]” (2007: xvi n. 5). However, by 1905, the Partido Civil had forgotten its earlier nationalist and nationalizing f lirtations. 9 An example of the limitations of the Aristocratic Republic can be seen in that, according to Jorge Basadre, in the elections of 1904, there we 146,990 registered voters, out of which only 97,719 actually voted (2014: 46). Despite the modernizing

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thrust of the Aristocratic Republic, there were no censuses between 1876, before the war with Chile, when the population of the country was listed as 2,699,105 and 1940, when it was counted as being 7,023,111). According to Flores Galindo, the rebellion of Rumi Maqui impacted the young José Carlos Mariátegui: “those apparently defeated and resigned indigenous masses rebelled and in the midst of the grey world of the Aristocratic Republic they vindicate something that seemed at first absurd and incomprehensible ... they attempt to recover an idealized Inca Empire, and, in this manner, they end up showing a different image for the country and the nation” (1980: 41). Mariátegui himself came out of this working class: he worked in the printing plant of the newspaper La Prensa before becoming a star journalist despite his being self-taught. According to Flores Galindo, “Guillermo Billinghurst’s rise to power (1912–1914) leads to the interruption in the oligarchic monopoly on the State, it makes possible the spontaneous and disorganized insurgency, in riots and strikes, of workers and artisan. For Mariátegui ... this discovery of the multitude will be decisive to the evolution of his mentality” (1980: 42). While Billinghurst supported the eight-hour work day, it was only applied to the dock workers in Callao in 1913. It became only became extended to all workers in 1918, after a number of strikes in which Haya de la Torre played a role as mediator between workers and the governments. Mariátegui also played a role supporting the strikers in his column in El Tiempo. Mariátegui himself wrote about Rumi Maqui’s rebellion: “The huacas [indigenous sacred places] are opening in order for the indigenous emperors of the Inca Empire to arise. We are living a solemn moment”; and: “And if we look at the map we find that the Indians, thanks to the words of general Rumimaqui dream with the restoration of the symbolic mascaipacha [a gold tassel worn by the Inca emperor], have taken up arms and are shaking their aggressive fists at the bold mestizos who oppress them” (quoted in Flores Galindo 1980: 77, 78). Mariátegui concludes: “It’s the rebirth of Peru” (Flores Galindo 1980: 79). With characteristic acuity, Flores Galindo states: “Leguía’s projects attempted to change Peruvian society ... but in the direction of capitalism. In order to achieve this goal, Leguía interfered with the power of the old oligarchy, allied to the landowners, attempted to promote the middle classes, and found mainly support in the investment and loans from imperialists. One consequence of these changes was that the dominant class’s old monopolic control over the cultural life of the country was weakened ... In both city and country, Leguía promoted publicly all kinds of projects that aimed to promote the development of capitalism. They did not always succeed, most were barely proposed, but this created fear among the old class of landowners and many decided to go into exile” (1980: 19). While it is beyond the scope of this essay to investigate the evolving relationship between Portal and the two political leaders, one can mention that, after being exiled to Cuba and then Mexico, she became one of Haya de la Torre’s closest allies. In 1948, she broke with Haya and the APRA when women were demoted from membership in the party (see Weaver 2009: 155–156). It may be worth noting that Mariátegui’s writing on the nation can be seen as a precedent for Anderson’s ideas. As Sara Castro-Klarén notes: “In a definition of nation that surprises us for its similarities with the theses of Benedict Anderson and Homi Bhabha, Mariátegui advances that for him ‘the nation itself is an abstraction, an allegory, a myth that does not correspond to a reality that can be scientifically defined’” (2008: 150). One can add that Mariátegui believed that the myth, a word which he uses in its Sorelian sense, of the nation could itself be shaped by political and cultural action. The centrality of cultural interpellation in Mariátegui’s politics helps explain the fact that Amauta was only the jewel in a necklace of the Peruvian Marxists’ editorial projects. In addition to this magazine, Mariátegui will edit a short-lived journal directed

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to a working-class readership: Labor. (It was closed by the government). Moreover, together with Amauta, Mariátegui established a book publishing imprint that, like the magazine, published books of poetry – by avant-garde authors of the Peruvian “new generation”, such as Magda Portal and Serafín del Mar, as well as Eguren’s collected poetry; an anthology of modernista Brazilian poetry; philosophy; Mariano Ibérico’s El nuevo absoluto; and Valcárcel’s indigenista celebration of the rebirth of Andean culture, Tempestad en los Andes. As Beigel has noted, Mariátegui’s editorial practice was inf luenced by the publishing activity of the Italian Ordine Novo group, led by Antonio Gramsci, and La Rivoluzione liberale, directed by Piero Gobetti, the intellectual most admired by the Peruvian Marxist. On Mariátegui’s editorial practice, see Beigel (2006: 89–130). The fact that Mariátegui gave this lecture at the Universidad Popular González Prada, headed by none other than Haya de la Torre, can be seen as exemplifying the friendly relations between both political leaders at the time. In my opinion, it is necessary to differentiate between Mariátegui’s and Haya’s private and public letters. Both political leaders often sent letters that they knew were going to be read by large groups of people. In fact, as in the case of Mariátegui’s letter to the “Mexico group” – the Peruvians close to Haya who lived in that country – they were on occasion addressed to a community of the “new generation” rather than individuals. Piérola, the leader of the Partido Demócrata, was a prime example of a caudillo, having first attained power as the result of an uprising, even if a pact with the Partido Civil helped found the Aristocratic Republic. According to Castro: “The origin of the word caudillo comes from the diminutive of the Latin word caput, which means ‘head’, ‘leader’, and, even if there is not unquestionable definition, in both academic and popular uses, the word evocates the strong man in politics ... Caudillismo and democratic institutions are elements situated in the two extremes of a line of ascendant political evolution in which the first would be more ‘primitive; and the second more ‘developed’” (2007: 10). For instance, in his letter to the Mexico group, Mariátegui states: “I’m opposed to the fact that an ideological movement that because of its historical justification, intelligence, the abnegation of its militants, the elevation and nobility of its doctrines would win, if we don’t destroy it, the conscience of the best part of the country, be aborted miserably in a vulgar electoral agitation” (1994: 373). The fact that he sees Haya’s electoral campaign as an abortion indicates that he believed that it was necessary to continue the earlier front politics practiced by the Peruvian left. As Flores Galindo correctly notes: “The party was being patiently constructed – in theory and practice – but always at the interior of the movement of the masses. This process was interrupted and, at the same time, accelerated ... by the polemic with the APRA movement” (1980: 33). In fact, while Mariátegui established connections with the Communist International, for instance, by sending delegates of the Party to its regional events, the Peruvian Socialist Party will only request membership in the Comintern in March 1930, when the Peruvian Marxist was already ill and had decided to relocate to Argentina (Flores Galindo 1980: 108). However, the phrase “Marxist-Leninist” appears in a peculiarly ironic context when writing about intellectuals who despair when they are disregarded by the masses: “A Writer, more or less absent from history, more or less foreign to the Revolution taking place, imagines herself sufficiently inspired to present the masses with a new conception of society and of politics. Since the masses do not give her enough credit and, without waiting for her magical discoveries, prefer to continue with the Marxist-Leninist method, the writer becomes disgusted with socialism and the working class, [becomes disgusted] with a doctrine and class she barely knows and which she approaches with all her academic, group, or café prejudices” (Mariátegui 1981a: 123).

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25 The statutes for the Communist Parties approved during the Third Congress of the Comintern in 1921, that is during Lenin’s watch, clearly state: “Formal or mechanical centralization would mean the centralization of ‘power’ in the hands of the Party bureaucracy, allowing it to dominate the other members of the Party or the revolutionary proletarian masses which are outside the Party. Only enemies of Communism can argue that the Communist Party wants to use its leadership of the proletarian class struggle and its centralization of Communist leadership to dominate the revolutionary proletariat. Such assertions are false. Equally incompatible with the principles of democratic centralism adopted by the Communist International are antagonisms or power struggles within the Party” (“The Organizational Structure of the Communist Parties, the Methods and Content of Their Work” 1980). 26 According to Flores Galindo, when Pesce and Julio Portocarrero (Mariátegui’s delegates to the Buenos Aires Communist conference) returned to Lima, “they had become proponents of the official positions [of the Comintern] ... It is believable that they experienced during and after the meeting diverse pressures based on the impossibility of being a revolutionary outside the International” (1980: 97). 27 For instance, in his and Pesce’s “The Problem of Race in Latin America” (2011: 316). 28 The most lucid of these speculations can be found in Flores Galindo 1980: 109–110.

References Basadre, Jorge (2014), Historia de la República del Perú (1822–1933), Vol. 12, Lima: Cantabria. Beigel, Fernanda (2003), El itinerario y la brújula. El vanguardismo estético-político de José Carlos Mariátegui, Buenos Aires: Biblos. Beigel, Fernanda (2006), La epopeya de una generación y una revista. Las redes editoriales de José Carlos Mariátegui en América Latina, Buenos Aires: Biblos. Castro, Pedro (2007), ‘El Caudillismo en América Latina, ayer y hoy’. Política y Cultura 27: 9–29. Castro-Klarén, Sara (2008), ‘Posting Letters: Writing in the Andes and the Paradoxes of the Postcolonial Debate’. In: Mabel Moraña, Enrique Dussel and Carlos Jaúregui (eds.), Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 130–157. ‘El Partido nacionalista peruano’ (1979), In: Rolando Pereda Torres (ed)., El Libro rojo de Haya de la Torre, Lima: Instituto de Estudios Anti-Imperialistas, 338–354. ‘Esquema del plan de México’ (1948), In: Ricardo Martínez de la Torre (ed.), Apuntes para una interpretación marxista de historia social del Perú, Vol 2, Lima: Empresa Editora Peruana, 290–293. Finchelstein, Federico (2017), From Fascism to Populism in History, Berkeley: University of California Press. Flores Galindo, Alberto (1980), La agonía de Mariátegui. La polémica con el Komintern, Lima: Desco. Flores Galindo, Alberto (1988), ‘Un viejo debate: El poder. (La polémica HayaMariátegui)’. Tiempo de Plagas, Lima: El Caballo Rojo Editores, 57–106. Forgues, Roland (1995), Mariátegui: Una utopía realizable, Lima: Editorial Amauta. Haya de la Torre and Víctor Raúl (1926), ‘What is Apra?’, (As Haya Delatorre), The Labour Monthly: a Magazine of International Labor 8(12): 756–759. Löwy, Michael (2007), El marxismo en América Latina, Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones. Manrique, Nelson (2009), ¡Usted fue aprista! Bases para una historia crítica del Apra, Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.

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Mariátegui, José Carlos (1970), Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, Marjory Urquidi (trs.), Austin: University of Texas Press. Mariátegui, José Carlos (1981a), Defensa del marxismo: Polémica revolucionaria, Lima: Amauta. Mariátegui, José Carlos (1981b). Ideología y política, Lima: Amauta, 237–239. Mariátegui, José Carlos (1994), José Carlos Mariátegui: Correspondencia, Lima: Amauta. Mariátegui, José Carlos (2011a), ‘Anniversary and Balance Sheet’. In: Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker (tr. and eds.) José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology, New York: Monthly Review Press, 127–131. Mariátegui, José Carlos (2011b), ‘Manifesto of the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers to the Peruvian Working Class’. In: Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker (trs. and eds.), José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology, New York: Monthly Review Press, 345–355. Mariátegui, José Carlos (2011c), ‘Peru’s Principal Problem’. In: Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker (trs. and eds), José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology, New York: Monthly Review Press, 139–142. Mariátegui, José Carlos (2011d), ‘The World Crisis and the Peruvian Proletariat’. In: Harry Vanden and Marc Becker (trs. and eds), José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology, New York: Monthly Review Press, 295–304. Mariátegui, José Carlos and Hugo Pesce (2011), ‘The Problem of Race in Latin America’. In: Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker (trs. and eds.), José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology, New York: Monthly Review Press, 305–326. ‘The Organizational Structure of the Communist Parties, the Methods and Content of Their Work: Theses’ (1980 (1921)), In: Adam Adler (ed.) Alix Holt and Barbara Holland (trs.), Theses Resolutions and Manifestos of the First Four Congress of the Third International, London: Ink Links, viewed 20 May, 2020, https://www.marxists.org/ history/international/comintern/3rd-congress/party-theses.htm ‘Programmatic Principles of the Socialist Party’ (2011), In: Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker (eds. and trs.) Harry Vanden and Marc Becker (eds.), José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology, New York: Monthly Review Press, 237–242. Quijano, Alberto (2007), ‘Prólogo: Encuentro y debate’. In: José Carlos Mariátegui, 7 Ensayos de intepretación de la realidad peruana, Carácas: Editorial Ayacucho, IX–CXII. Quiroz, Alfonso W (2013), Historia de la corrupción el el Perú, Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. Velásquez Castro, Marcel (2004), ‘Mariátegui Unplugged’. Quehacer 150, viewed 20 May 2020, http://www.desco.org.pe/recursos/sites/indice/29/126.pdf. Weaver, Kathleen (2009), Peruvian Rebel: The World of Magda Portal with a Selection of Her Poems, University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania.

INDEX

Abdallah, Ismail-Sabri xix, 142, 149–152 accumulation xix, 41, 139–143, 145, 153; and primitive 41, 142, 143 Agrarian reform 47, 140, 144, 169, 170 Amauta 181–185 Amin, Samir 145, 154n15 Anderson, Benedict ix, x, 13, 38, 111, 159, 183, 194n16 angry politics 98, 99 anti-colonial struggle, x, xiv, xviii, 19, 24, 33–36, 100, 160, 162, 183 Arab nationalism see nationalism Aristocratic Republic 124, 179–182, 186, 190, 193n9, 194n10, 195n20 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal 5 austerity 99–101, 163 autonomy xiv, xvi, xviii, xix, 9, 40, 49–52, 61, 62, 64–69, 85, 88, 123, 124, 140; see also democratic autonomy Bayik, Cemil 8 Beigel, Fernanda 181, 195n17 Billinghurst, Guillermo 180, 194n12 Bloch, Ernst 24, 33, 37, 42–44 Bolivarianism xii, xiv, xvi, xvii, 75; as an anti-homogenizing project 75, 76, 77, 78, 81–84; and constituent power 84–85; and pueblo xii, xvii, 76, 77, 81–83, 85, 89, 91, 93n2; as selfgovernment (communes) 76, 85–91 Bookchin, Murray xiv, 4, 10, 11 Bourgeoisie xiii, 31, 33, 36, 144

Brexit: and (post)colonialism 98–99, 101, 104, 105, 117, 113; and Conservative Party 99, 100, 104, 106; and Labour Party 100, 101; and populism 98, 100; and referendum 98, 99, 100, 105, 107, 108, 109; and revitalization of nationalism 99, 101, 103–107; and Scottish National Party 103, 109; and Sinn Fein 108, 110, 112; and spatial distribution of the vote 108–110; and UKIP 101, 104, 106 Cabral, Amilcar 142, 143, 154n7 capitalism xviii, x, xi, xiv, xviii, xx, 139, 182, 189; as modern civilization 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39; the PKK’s conception of 4, 17, 18, 24; Russian experiences with 117, 131; and the state 76, 89, 90 (non/anti) capitalist development xiv, 35, 36, 130, 149 capitalist modernity x, xiv, xv, 9, 11, 49 Castro, Pedro 186 Caudillismo 186, 195n21 Chaadaev, Peter 124, 125 Chaves, Hugo xii, xvi, xvii, 80, 92, 93; and Communal Councils 86–87; and the communal state 89–91; as leader of Revolutionary Bolivarianism 75–76; and pueblo 81–85 Chinese model 144, 147–151 civic nationalism see nationalism

200

Index

class xiv, xv, xvi, 7, 24, 27–29, 31–33, 35–39, 66, 68, 76, 78–82, 101, 106, 121, 128–129, 131, 141, 145–147, 179–180, 183, 190–192, 194n14, 195n17, 195n24, 196n26 class struggle xv, 7, 24, 27, 28, 31, 33, 66, 81, 82 colonialism x, xi, xvi, xxii, 7, 76, 99, 104, 107, 139, 142, 143, 145, 148, 153, 165, 167; and anti-colonial(ism) x, xiv, xviii, 19, 24, 33, 34, 35, 36, 100, 160, 162, 183; and decolonization 76, 77, 80, 91, 143–145, 153, 182, 183; and neocolonial(ism) 142, 165, 167; and postcolonial(ism) 8, 80, 101, 105, 107, 113, 143, 144, 147, 149; and precolonial 158 Comintern 191, 192, 195n23, 196n25, 196n26 communal(ism) xvii, 11, 28, 42, 45n3, 75–77, 83, 85–91, 126, 132 communes xii, xvii, 11, 17, 18, 30, 31, 34, 76, 85–93, 118, 127, 129, 130, 132, 167, 179 communism xv, 26, 132, 179, 184, 187, 189, 190, 195n25 Communist Party of Turkey (Türkiye Komünist Partisi, TKP) 23 communitarian xviii, 24, 65, 67, 118, 131 community x, 8, 27, 48, 59, 65, 76, 125, 141, 143, 159, 160, 163, 178; building xvi, 14, 16, 54–57, 61–64, 67; and development 150–151; as Gemeinschaft 43, 127; as nation 13, 14, 19, 41–44, 77, 78, 81, 83, 174; see also imagined community; and self-rule 12–13, 16, 40–41, 51–52, 58, 60, 65, 67–69, 80, 86–89, 91, 165 Compaoré, Blaise 172–173 constituent power xvii, 75–77, 84–87, 89, 90, 92, 93, 98, 103, 110, 111 conviviality 105, 113 cooperatives xii, xvi, 17, 30, 49, 52, 56–64, 66, 68, 83, 88, 89, 92, 100, 118, 151, 165 cosmopolitan 99, 107, 109, 111, 126, 193n5 council xii, xiv, xvii, xix, 4, 10–13, 15–16, 18, 58, 76, 83, 85–87, 89, 91, 93, 159, 165, 168 cultural diversity (difference) xi, 5, 6, 9, 18, 57, 75, 79, 80, 83, 98, 105, 112, 129, 160, 171, 173 cultural homogeneity (unity) 77–80, 125, 126

cultural identity 5, 7, 12, 38, 41, 158, 159, 162, 173 culture x, xiii, xiv, xv, xv, xix, 13, 24, 28, 37, 124, 126, 127, 187, 189, 191; and (post/anti) colonial 82, 105, 181, 182; and indigenous communities xiv, xix, xx, 80, 82, 83, 167, 168, 179, 182, 192; and nation xiii, 5, 14, 42, 44, 78, 105, 109, 111, 118, 121, 125, 167–168 deindustrialization 101, 104, 109, 110, 144 democratic autonomy 11–13, 15 democratic confederalism xi, 11–16 democratic nation xiv, xv, 11, 13–14 democratic republic 11, 14 developmentalism 76, 141, 144, 146, 148, 149, 153 Doğan, Mazlum 3, 18 Educational Committee of Social Economies of the Common (ECOMUN) 47, 52, 58, 60, 61, 64 empire xiii, xvii, 4, 5, 29, 101, 107, 119, 120, 133n1, 160, 162, 163, 170, 180 Engels, Friedrich xv, 23, 25–27, 32, 43, 132 English nationalism see nationalism Englishness xvii, 103–105 Enlightenment xviii, 78, 112, 120, 125, 126, 129 ethnic groups 13, 158–163, 166, 168, 171 ethnic nationalism see nationalism ethnicity xi, xvii, 11, 78, 81, 101, 118, 168, 169, 173 European Union xiii, 98–100, 104–112 fascism 187, 190 feminism xiii, 10, 63, 191 Finchelstein, Federico 184, 192, 193n6 Flores Galindo, Alberto 141, 179, 180, 184, 190, 194n10, 194n12, 194n13, 194n14, 195n22, 195n23, 196n26, 196n28 Forgues, Roland 189, 190 Frank, Waldo 188, 192 French Revolution xvii, 75, 76, 78, 94n4, 171 Freud, Sigmund 182 Gellner, Ernest ix, x, 50, 78, 80 gender xi, xiii, 4, 12, 15, 17, 48, 63, 88, 141, 145, 152, 191 General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (Central General de Trabajadores del Perú, CGTP) 191 guerrilla xvi, xvii, 8, 48–51, 53, 54, 58–64, 66–68, 75, 81, 145, 148, 184

Index

Haya de la Torre, Víctor Raúl xix, xx, 177–179, 181, 184–190, 193, 194 hegemony xvii, 76, 83, 90, 103, 104, 107, 112, 118, 131, 159, 162, 170, 171 Herzen, Alexander xii, xiv, xviii, 117, 118, 123, 129–132 identity x, xi, xiii, xiv, xvii, xviii, xix, 5–7, 12, 13, 18, 38, 65, 101, 110, 118, 121–126, 131–132, 158–159, 166–167, 170, 171, 173–174 imagined community xix, 13, 111–112, 147, 159, 183 imperialism xii, xiii, xix, xx, 7, 44, 90, 111, 113, 139, 140, 166, 178, 189 infra-politics 48, 49, 52, 66, 67, 69 internationalism xviii, 113, 139, 141, 172 Irish nationalism see nationalism Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP) 17 Karatani, Kojin x, 24, 33, 37, 41, 42, 44 Kemalism 7, 23 Khaldun, Ibn xii, 24, 26, 27, 33, 35, and asabiyyah 24, 26–27, 34, 35, 38, 41 Kinship 25–27, 30, 35, 38 Kıvılcımlı, Hikmet: and civilization 24, 26–33, 34, 35, 36, 39, 40, 42, 45; and collective action 24–35, 37–40; and historical materialism xv, 24, 27, 28, 29, 31; and historical revolution-social revolution 27–29; and History Thesis 23–45; and modernity 29–33; and primitive socialism 19n1, 24, 28, 30, 31, 33–37, 39–41, 44 Kurdish nationalism see nationalism Kurdistan 3, 4, 6–8, 12, 15, 18 Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) 6 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê, PKK) xii, xv, xvi, 3, 4, 11, 17, 18, 19; emergence of 6–8; and national liberation 10; and paradigm change 8–9; split within the 10 labor 24, 26, 32, 37, 38, 39, 63, 67, 140, 142, 143, 150, 151, 153, 160, 162, 163, 165, 166, 180, 190–192; as labor law 163; as labor reserve 161; as labor union 191; as movement 180, 192 La Fortuna 49, 52, 56, 60, 61, 63–69 language xvii, xix, 5, 9, 12, 14, 17, 77, 78, 80, 81, 103, 109, 112, 119, 120, 158, 159, 165–168, 177, 178, 186, 191

201

Latin America xvi, xvii, xx, 50, 68, 87, 154n6, 177–179, 181, 185, 187, 191, 192, 193n2 Leguía, Augusto B 177, 180, 182, 184, 186, 190, 192, 194n14 Lenin 189, 190, 196n25 Lexit xvii, 100, 101 Maduro, Nicolás 76, 92 Maoism 144, 149 Mariátegui, José Carlos: and Amauta 181–185; and critique on populism 179, 182, 185–187, 188; and indigenous populations and institutions 179, 180, 182, 188, 189, 191, 192; as Marxist intellectual 177, 182, 183, 188–190, 192; and Peruvian left 177, 178, 191, 195n22; and Socialist Party 178, 188, 193n3, 193n5 Marx, Karl 4, 27, 32, 37, 47, 81, 132, 182, 187 Marxism xii, xiv, 36, 37, 39, 147, 189, 190, 192 Marxism-Leninism xi, 3, 18, 19n2, 23, 29, 34–36, 51, 58, 67, 189, 190, 195n24 middle-classes xiii, 82, 106, 179, 180, 190 modernization 40, 47, 50, 51, 79, 117, 126, 129, 179–182, 186 Morgan, Lewis Henry xv, 23, 25, 27 multitude 75, 81–83, 166, 184 municipalism 11 Narod xiv, xvi, viii, 117, 118; and autocracy xii, 117–119, 127–132; and obshchina 127, 130, 131, 132; see also peasant commune; and populism 117, 128, 129, 132; and Russian intelligentsia 120–124, 126, 127, 131, 132 Nasser, Gamal Abdel 141, 144, 148, 149, 154n13, 154n15 nation building xix, 91, 111, 158, 159, 170–172 National Council of the Revolution (CNR) xiv, xix, 159, 165–167, 170, 172, 173 national liberation x, xii, xiii, xiv, xv, xvi, xviii, 4, 10, 18, 24, 33, 47, 50, 100, 123, 139, 141–143, 145, 149, 152 national/popular sovereignty xi, xii, xxi, 78, 98, 101, 113, 142 national question xvii, xviii, 99, 111, 139, 140, 143, 145, 153 nationalism ix–x, xxi, 4, 33, 34, 50, 76, 77, 78, 99, 101, 104, 111, 112, 119,

202 Index

123, 139–143, 172, 179, 189; as antinationalism 139; as Arab Nationalism xviii, xix, 141, 144–148, 153, 154n3, 154n5, 154n7; as civic nationalism x, 77–78, 108, 112, 123; as EnglishBritish nationalism xvii, xvii, 98–99, 101, 103–108, 111, 113; as ethnic nationalism x, 77, 94, 112; as European nationalism 75; as gentry nationalism 129; and homogenizing 5, 76–77, 79, 93n3; as Irish nationalism xvii, 103, 104, 108, 112; as Kurdish nationalism xviii, xix, 6, 15; as Polish nationalism 118, 113, 132; as racialized nationalism 106; as Romantic nationalism 126; as Russian nationalism 117–120, 122, 123, 125, 130–132, 133n5; as Scottish nationalism xvii, 103, 104, 108, 109, 112; as Turkish nationalism 4, 5, 7, 19n2; as Venezuelan nationalism 79; as Welsh nationalism xvii, 108, 109, 112, 113 Nationalist Liberating Party (Partido Nacionalista Libertador, PNL) xx, 177– 179, 183–185, 187–190, 193n3, 193n5 nation-state x, xi, xii, xv, xvi, 4, 6, 8, 18, 75–77, 79, 99, 111, 139, 145, 146, 148–150, 159 neoliberal(ism) 48–51, 63, 65, 66, 99, 100, 111, 153, 173 Öcalan, Abdullah xi, xii, xii, xiv, xv, xx, 3, 45n3, 50; and abduction from Kenia 4; and democratic autonomy 12–13, 15; and democratic confederalism 12–13; and modernity 11; and Murray Bookchin 11; and nation 13–14; political thought of 9; and selfdetermination 19; and state critique, 8–10, 17 official nationality 118, 119, 125, 133n2 Partido Civil 179, 193n8, 193n20 Partido Democráta 179, 193n7, 193n20 Patriotic Democratic Party of Kurdistan (Partiya Welatparêzên Demokratên Kurdistan, PWD) 10 patriotism xi, 34, 124, 129, 131, 167 peace building xii, 49, 50, 52, 65 peasant xii, xvi, xviii, xix, 5, 7, 32, 36, 41, 48, 51, 52, 68, 80, 82, 87, 91, 118, 123, 127, 129, 131, 132, 144, 147, 148, 150–152, 168, 179, 180, 191 peasant commune/community xvi, xviii, 48, 118, 127, 129, 130, 132

peasant resistance 49, 64, 66, 69 The people xiii, xvii, 3, 12, 14, 15, 18, 19, 31, 57, 75, 77, 78, 80, 81, 85, 100, 107, 108, 127, 128, 130, 142, 144–147, 149, 160, 172, 177 Peruvian Apra Party (Partido Aprista Peruano) 179, 184 Pesce, Hugo 191, 196n26, 196n27 Piérola, Nicolás 179, 186, 193n7, 195n20 Popular American Revolutionary Alliance (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana, APRA) xix, xx, 177–179, 183, 185, 187, 188 popular politics/power 8, 76, 87, 89, 93, 139 populism xii, xviii, xx–xxi, 98–100, 117, 128–129, 132, 145, 179, 185, 193n5; as authoritarian populism 98; and critique on populism 179, 182, 185–187, 188; as left populism xx, xxi, 100; as right populism 99 Portal, Magda 181–183, 188, 194n15, 195n17 pre-capitalist xv, 24, 27, 28, 30, 32, 36, 40, 130 productive forces xv, 24–31, 33, 37, 39, 40, 44n2, 141–146, 154n7 race xiii, 42, 44, 80, 101, 107, 191, 192 racism 76, 105, 172 radicalism 34, 76, 77 Ravines, Eudocio 184, 186, 192 reincorporation 47, 49, 51–54, 56, 58–61, 63–66, 68–69; and DDR (Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration) 49; ETCR see peace building; as NAR (New Areas of Reincorporation) 47, 54; and ZVTN (Transitional Zones of Normalization) 59, 69n3 religion 14, 125, 126, 159, 162 representation xiii, 19, 44, 76, 122, 163 Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) 5 republicanism 34, 145 resistance xiii, xvi, 4, 5, 7, 10, 49–52, 64, 66–69, 80, 82, 87, 90, 93, 107, 132, 159, 160, 169, 173, 182 revolutionary xii, xiv, xvi, xvii, xix, xx, 6–7, 9, 19n2, 23–24, 28, 29, 33–36, 38–39, 42, 47–48, 69, 75–77, 80–85, 89–93, 117, 128, 130–132, 148, 159, 164–169, 171–174, 177, 178, 183, 185, 187, 189, 192, 196n25; as council 168; as current xvii, 91; as models 7,

Index 

203

23, 148; as process 39, 172; as project xix, 75, 166, 172; and revolutionary conscience 183 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de ColombiaEjército del Pueblo, FARC-EP) xii, xvi, 47, 50–51; and alternative model of society (autonomy) 48–49, 53, 58, 61, 63, 65, 67–68; and insurgency 48; and peace accords 47, 52–53, 58–60 romanticism 84, 118, 125, 126, 147 rural xiv, 48, 50, 53, 54, 62, 65, 86–88, 104, 105, 109, 127, 128, 144, 148, 150– 152, 164–167, 169, 170, 179, 180, 192 Russian nation(alism) see nationalism Russian socialism xviii, 118, 132

Socialist Party (Partido Socialista) 178, 188, 193n3, 193n5 solidarity x, xvi, 14, 26, 30, 37, 38, 45n5, 51–52, 62–63, 65–66, 100, 141, 145, 158, 159, 174, 178, 188, 189 solidarity economy xvi, 52, 62, 63, 65, 66 sovereignty xi, xii, xxi, 39, 78, 98, 99, 101, 103, 113, 141, 144; as food sovereignty 68; gain and loss of xviii, 77, 100, 108, 139, 142, 152, 163; as state sovereignty xiii, xviii, xix, 139, 142, 153; as (non-) transferable xii, 75, 83, 85 space 19, 40, 47, 51, 54, 63, 76, 84, 88, 90, 124, 139, 148, 165, 187 Stalin 34, 189

Sankara, Thomas xii, xiv, xix, 159, 164, 166–169, 171–174; assassination of 172–173; and new national identity 167, 171–172; and political orientation and promotion of difference 166–168, 170, 171; and reform of the state 166 Scottish nationalism see nationalism self-determination xi–xv, xviii, xxi, 4, 12, 13, 19, 34, 44, 66, 140 self-government xii, xvii, 12, 13, 18, 34, 40–41, 76, 77, 85, 86, 89, 90, 92, 93 self-reliance 146–151 Sense of loss xvii, 101, 113 Slavophiles xii, xviii, 117, 118, 122, 124–130 socialism xiv, xvii, xviii, xx, 7, 8, 10, 19, 24, 28, 30–37, 39–41, 44, 75, 81–82, 90, 92, 117, 118, 129, 130, 132, 147, 183, 186–189

temporality 42, 43, 144 Turkish nationalism see nationalism underdevelopment xviii, xix, 50, 52, 132, 139, 146 uneven development 50, 110, 147, 151 urban 11, 16, 17, 50, 62, 63, 65, 67, 78, 85–87, 94n10, 94n14, 128, 150, 164, 165, 180, 191 Uriburu, José Felix 193 Utopia 42–44, 82, 141, 153 Uvarov, Sergei 118, 119 Velázquez Castro, Marcel 182–183 Welsh nationalism see nationalism Westernizers xviii, 117, 118, 124–129, 131 working-class 31–39, 106, 180, 183, 190–192