RE: [OPE] Anti-imperialism and nationalism

Gerry
-------

This is one-sided, I think. A nation is not an "imagined community". It is
a real, but
stratified, community. A materialist analysis can not begin with a rejection
of
material realities: it must seek to explain in part the _complex_ relation
between material
realities and ideology. If nations were simply myths they would have
vanished long
ago (?).

------------------------

Is Scotland a real community or an imagined one?

I would say that its reality is inseperable from the existence of state or protostate apparatuses on the one hand, and nationalist ideology as a state supporting ideology on the other : manufacture of a national history, creation of national heroes, projection of an imaginary national economic project based on oil revenues etc. If the nationalists achieve their aims of a full state, then the state is real, but that is allowed for in Daves formulation.

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Received on Fri Dec 18 10:34:53 2009