Happy 237th!
Life does not begin at conception
The United States was the first Modern nation-state. We invented the institution as a means of overcoming contradictions and shortcomings of all prior social collectives—the tribes, the realms, the dynasties, the Holy Order, and feudal monarchies.
The nation-state was not the first bureaucratized institution—we can merely look at Confucianism’s elevation of bureaucracy to a spiritual ideal to see its import. Nor was the nation-state the first order to lay claim to a People—that goes as far back as tribalism. Nor would it be the first “democratic” institution; that belonged to the Ancient Greeks.
What sets the Modern nation-state apart is its capacity to mobilize resources on a global scale. Before Capital was near-universalized, the nation-state system was established and setting people into global warfare. At once, the nation-state made possible both the human population explosion of the past two centuries, and made it possible for the first time, that “civilians” could be considered on par with enemy soldiers. The nation-state could mobilize war-making so effectively that all members of a society could be drafted into the war effort.
As there may be no Atheists in foxholes, there are no innocents in nation-states during a time of war.
Newborns are made into Nationalists, socialized to identify with one outline on a map more strongly than with any other. We ritually observe the overbearing importance of nationhood, with each nation doing the same thing, each in their own way. In the United States, we celebrate Independence Day—the marker of the “birth” of the U.S.A. Never mind that the Constitution which forms the legal foundation of the nation-state was not ratified until March, 1789.
We still have thirteen years to go, actually.
But Americans are an impatient sort, the type of people who would argue that life begins at conception, missing the point that life began in the process of universe-formation. On this particular planet we can trace biology back over 3.5 billion years. Homo sapiens sapiens have been walking these lands for at least 200,000 years, and for a million years before them, our hominid predecessors did as well—even if some of them walked on all fours.
We would be fooling ourselves, if we were to think the nation-state is the final social institution. It’s shortcomings and contradictions are made clearer to us, with each passing year. It is incapable of containing a small percentage of the population, who have (through particular property relations) command of more resources than most nation-states. The individual, thus empowered, will take to undoing that which the old system does not serve their new interests.
Like a proto-Bourgeoisie, whose ability to amass Capital and political influence could see that “taxation without representation” and the sundry list of complaints against King George III were so onerous as to lead them to violent insurrection. But first, there was the “Bye, Felicia” letter they felt compelled to write—250 years ago. That is what Americans celebrate today. A slam note.
There was no institution to take the King’s place, in place. The American nation was birthed in anarchy, and in having been so, exposed the anarchic nature of human social order. Society does not need nation-states, but the new ruling class did. They birthed, fostered, and developed the nation-state to serve their own class interests and in doing so, have begun to supersede it.
The liberal democratic nation-state system has empowered the Modern individual such that some pose a threat to the social order itself.
We know that to give a People a nation-state will force them to behave as those who control a nation-state would. The evidence of the past 236 years would lead an objective observer to conclude that nation-states permit and enable men to become monsters. The history of the nation-state is a history of genocides and depopulation movements, and that class of global billionaires have shown us their vision of the next phase of large-scale social institution promises nothing better for the rest of us.
The first modern Olympics was staged in 1896—a pedagogical tool for global nationalism, led by Europeans and their (former) colonies. Woodrow Wilson conceived of the League of Nations as a means of maintaining global order between nation-states. It was formed and broke apart, in the interstitial between the two flare-ups of the War of German Aggression. It was replaced in the late 1940’s with the United Nations; ostensibly a global institution, the UN’s primary role has been to shore up Western hegemony with a strong pro-US bias.
Trump’s “Board of Peace,” is a knockoff UN. He’s not bright enough to understand that the next phase of large-scale social institution will not look like nation-states; they will be the form that becomes preferred over nation-states. What that preference may look like depends on one’s social class position, under the nation-state system.
The next large-scale social institution will be social class-based.
The primary contradiction of social class is the zero-sum nature of Bourgeois ownership. The goal of the Bourgeoisie is to impose power via their ownership of the means of production, and as that ownership form runs into contradictions of its own making, they only know one way to address it: Drill, baby, drill! or some other such nonsense.
“Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.”
―Cree Indian Prophecy
Thank you for writing this. You're absolutely correct. We're not celebrating the birth of a nation today; rather, it was the emancipation from our parents. You could argue the United States was officially born in 1783 with the Articles of Confederation. But the current nation wasn't established, as you point out, until 1789 with the ratification and implementation of the U.S. Constitution. History matters more than mythology.