Beyond Disaster Nationalism: Democratic Movements Must Rethink Territoriality

Models and practices of democracy that exclude illiterate people are inherently elitist and contradictory. Consequently, despite its considerable efforts throughout history to provide workers with primary education, the left’s high democratic aspirations suffer. It is therefore high time to rethink what could connect us in the face of rising disaster nationalism, argues Slave Cubela in his contribution to the “Deep Democracy” series.

*

Power and writing go hand in hand. Large-scale exploitation requires accounting and analysis. Capitalism is unique in this respect because literacy is more widespread within it than within other systems of power. Its rise has been accompanied by the development of the modern university system. This system repeatedly produces an excess of literacy, putting intellectuals at risk of decline. Ultimately, capitalism leads to the spread of literacy even among the dominated classes.

A byproduct of this development is the emergence of the modern left. Consider the concept of class, for example. Initially, it was the result of 18th-century political-economic research. During the social struggles of a rapidly changing society, the concept of class became a moment of self-enlightenment. Intellectual outsiders, often precarious journalists or publicists, showed solidarity with workers. However, it was primarily craftsmen, such as printers, who ensured that workers began to see themselves as a working class.

One might think this is trivial. But how else could the central goal of the modern left, emancipation, be achieved if not through reading, writing, and (self-)enlightenment? However, this development has another side to it. Over time, it led the left into increasingly elaborate systems of concepts and strategies. Many leftist categories are well thought out but not easily discernible. Workers can be identified by external characteristics, but what exactly makes them a ‘class’? People from other regions can sometimes be heard, but when exactly are they ‘migrants’? What are the simple characteristics of ‘the multitude’ or ‘LGBTQ people’?

Only rudimentary reading skills

This may seem insignificant again because deciphering complex ideological relationships requires intensive conceptual work. However, the counterintuitive foundations of the left have practical implications. This is particularly evident in the history of the labor movement, which I will focus on in the following. The key point is that the left pays for its critical, reflective knowledge by becoming isolated from its base. This base often consists of people with only rudimentary reading skills, as many studies show. Consequently, the left’s high democratic aspirations suffer, despite its considerable efforts throughout history to provide workers with primary education.

However, literacy reproduces power structures within the working-class left. The fewer written strategies that can be read, discussed and corrected at the base level of the class, the greater the risk of these strategies being ineffective. For instance, if the concept of class leads the literate left to adopt an internationalist and class-struggle perspective, as they have read about in thousands of books, then workers who tend to rely on oral communication are unlikely to join in. For them, the concept of the working class is much less clear-cut. They cannot analyze it through reading and writing. For workers who are completely exhausted by their jobs and unable to engage in intellectual development through reading and writing, the concept of class is often just a buzzword that shapes their identity.

Therefore, behind many left-wing declarations and demonstrations of unity, there are often unnoticed cracks caused by written texts. These cracks significantly contribute to the zigzag political movements that run through the entire history of the labor movement. In 1848, for example, the left watched as workers primarily fought for constitutions and national emancipation. In 1870/71, Parisian workers initially fought against Prussia out of patriotism, only to proclaim the Paris Commune after their defeat. In 1914, the mere suggestion of wars for national defense was enough to plunge the left-wing International into a deep crisis. Only then did workers begin to resist and attempt revolution. The Great Depression of 1929 plunged the world economy into crisis. During this time, workers in Germany capitulated to National Socialism without resistance, and class struggles did not break out in the US until the mid-1930s. In 1941, the USSR did not respond to the invasion by the Wehrmacht with class rhetoric. Instead, resistance was organized under the banner of the Great Patriotic War.

Triumph of disaster nationalism

Notably, these examples are not the only ones revealing a pattern. In times of internal or external threat, nationalism has made the class-struggle perspectives of the left difficult or impossible. There are many reasons for this, and the left often points to the propaganda or hegemony of the ruling class. However, one aspect of nationalism is rarely seen in left-wing debates: nationalism is much more intuitive than left-wing strategies. It refers to the immediate world around us (Nahwelt). It refers to a world in which most people speak a common language. It refers to a world in which cultural values and practices, if not shared, are at least roughly familiar. In this sense, it can refer to the here and now of everyday life.

The intuitive dimension of nationalism has an advantage over more abstract left-wing concepts, which becomes particularly apparent in times of crisis for one simple reason: fear floods the socially vulnerable classes particularly strongly in times of crisis. However, massive fear narrows everyone’s perspective. People worry about themselves, their families, their neighbors, and their region – in other words, the immediate world in which they feel at home as social beings. Abstract categories, such as class, internationalism, and world revolution, that they have been unable to grasp due to their oral-communication based culture seem distant. In other words, waves of fear replace the emancipatory principle of left-wing social analysis with the more intuitive principle of the immediate living environment or territoriality.

However, if this interpretation is correct, the left in the 21st century faces a problem. How can it use its social analyses to gain ground among people who, due to advancing digitalization, are moving into low-literacy worlds of imagination in an age of fear? Standing at the bottom of the social ladder, these people view disaster capitalism with particular concern. The current trend is clear: the global triumph of “disaster nationalism” (Richard Seymour) illustrates the principle of territoriality’s superiority in times of crisis.

Territoriality anti-emancipatory by nature

However, the left should not bury its head in the sand. It could ask: Is the principle of territoriality anti-emancipatory by nature? In my opinion, the answer is no. Jean-Jacques Rousseau noted that democracies weaken as they encompass more people and territories, a fact impressively confirmed by the history of the US, Russia, and China. While these vast territorial states with large populations and markets have certainly been useful for economic development, even in the US, democracy has always been accompanied by everyday racism and the brutal oppression of workers in countless class struggles, even in the best of times.

Furthermore, democracy is becoming increasingly vital for survival in the rampant disaster capitalism of the 21st century. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how quickly global logistics chains can collapse and how important local solidarity and care networks are. However, the principle of territoriality aligns with the collapse-oriented dynamics of our time because it fosters genuine human connection. This connection is particularly crucial in times of incessant, fear-inducing disasters because it helps prevent fear from escalating into anger and irrationality.

The democratic potential of territoriality

Furthermore, when the world looks on in amazement at Minneapolis for successfully standing up to MAGA fascism, it also highlights the democratic potential of territoriality. Long-standing community organizing, local alliances, and the city as an everyday meeting place can bring people together across class, race, and national boundaries to stand up for one another. This is not as surprising as it might seem. The history of the left offers many examples of vibrant democratic territorialism. For example, the armed regional conflicts in Mexico from 1910 to 1920, which are considered the defining event of modern Mexico, were fought under the slogan ‘Tierra y Libertad’ (Land and Freedom). The left’s victory in Russia in 1917 was largely due to Red Petrograd, one of the few places in Russia where proletarian cultures of solidarity existed. The Basque Country has always been a stronghold of the left. Zohran Mamdani’s election victory in New York is also a victory for emancipatory territoriality.

Therefore, let us emphasize the following: Models and practices of democracy that exclude many illiterate people are inherently elitist and contradictory. The left should quickly internalize this, not least because they can hardly afford aloof debates on emancipation during a time of impending collapse. Of course, it will lose some conceptual precision in the process. However, with the principle of territoriality, it gains immensely in accessibility. However, if the left refuses to accept this insight, it will unfortunately reproduce what it is fighting against because power and writing are intertwined.