War, Borders, and Making the State Look Real

This brief comment was part of my introduction to the Old Mole Variety Hour on July 2, 2018. It is part of my ongoing mission as an Old Mole to make capitalism look as bad as it really is, a task made necessary by capitalism’s never-ending capacity to appear neutral or even benign.

Capitalism depends on the nation-state for many things, including organizing and defending its way of doing business in the world. Thus the State regulates and limits the ability of workers to organize to minimize their exploitation; it funnels profits to major corporations for the production of war and security materiel and for building and operating camps and prisons for the enemies of the state. The nation-state, of course, is only a social fiction, and yet it must command the loyalty and even the veneration of most of its people since it is in the holy name of the Nation that people are often required to lay down their lives on the battlefield for its preservation and honor. And it is precisely the mountains of the dead left on battlefields that makes the state real and revered by its people. We are encouraged to believe, as the Roman poet Horace put it, that “It is sweet and proper to die for the fatherland,” or, as we now say, the Homeland, and that so many have died for it makes us believe that it must be real – since we are not allowed to say that all those soldiers died for an illusion. Another way the State can make itself seem real in the eyes of its people is by making a spectacular defense of its borders against people it demonizes as outsiders, enemies, alien people. That of course is what’s happening on our Southern border today: The nation state that calls itself “America,” and that has historically conceived of itself as “White”, is trying to make itself “Great” by militarizing the arbitrary line between itself and the peoples of other American nations.